I went back to work this week. It was supposed to be on Monday, but since there was another lovely blizzard blowing outside my window, I called in storm-stayed. That's right, I skipped my first day of work! :)
Tuesday found me up at 6:15 a.m. All the lunches were made, the girls' bags were packed, my work bag was packed, and the breakfast smoothies were in the fridge. I just had to get dressed, start the car, wake up Gracie, get her dressed, take her to pee, wake up Ella, and walk out the door. It went amazingly well! Everything was right on schedule, and was as easy as I had hoped (after all of the planning to make sure mornings could be seamless). Since I work in Kentville, I had to be out the door by 7:03, drop the ladies off at daycare, and be at work by 8:00. I arrived at 7:55. Perfection!
We had a nice little "welcome back Sam" chat in the pit at work (the "pit" is the area where I work with a couple of other ladies) and I dove right in. I dove right in because I already had a pile of files on my desk waiting for me. A settlement proposal, client letters, and the usual daily stuff. Then one of my lawyers called and asked if I could import an email list from Excel to Outlook. Our I.T. guy was having a hell of a time, so maybe I could give it a try. Sure! I got it to import, and then accidentally sent a blank email to over 2000 lawyers. That's right... TWO THOUSAND!! *sigh* And it was only 10:30. I know you're probably thinking, "it's just a blank email, what's the big deal?" The deal is that most lawyers live on their email... which means within minutes, my Inbox filled with close to 600 replies. Some of them were standard replies, "so-and-so is out of the office..." but many were different versions of "hey crazy lady, you just sent me a blank email... did you really want something or are you just monumentally fucking up your first day back to work?" I also received 8 phone calls asking the same thing. So I wrote an apology to almost every single person who emailed me back. I did meet a couple of interesting people, including one gentleman who was sure we were related, and three lawyers who asked if I was a real person or a Zimbabwean looking for travel money back to Canada (a common spam letter to lawyers, believe it or not).
Of course the email comedy didn't end there. Nope. See the reason I imported the list of 2000+ lawyers is because one of my lawyers was trying to mass-email them. It turns out that our server isn't capable of mass-emailing, so I had to copy and paste individual email addresses from one email program to another (which doesn't support imported address lists). It took the rest of my first day, plus the entire next day... with me and another girl working on it in turns. Isn't that a fantastic welcome back to work??
Also, I've discovered that I am probably going to have to move out of the "pit" into an actual office. Turns out the new lawyer I am working for is incredibly busy, with many extra-curricular lawyer activities that I am also responsible for, and my little corner of the pit just isn't big enough. Now having one's own office may seem like a privilege... but I think it'll just make me lonely! You see, the nice thing about working in a pit setting is that a few times a day, I get to lean back in my chair, take a deep breath, and have a nice little chat with my pit ladies. We sometimes do useless trivia, sometimes we do word definitions (yeah, we're nerds), sometimes we just complain about everything under the sun. But it's nice to have the companionship and know you're not alone. If I have my own office, I can just imagine myself sitting at my desk... looking out the door into the pit and watching the other girls have a little chat break. A tear will roll down my cheek. And I'll call out "helloooo?" But nobody will hear me. Okay, so maybe a little dramatic. But I've been in my corner for 5 years, and I don't wanna move! :(
When I left work on Thursday, I was pretty sure it was Friday. I said "have a good weekend" to everybody, and they laughed at me. Today, both of my lawyers were out. So I thought I was going to get to relax and slow down a little... but alas, the 2000+ lawyer email fiasco reared its ugly head again, and I spent the entire afternoon on the phone with our tech people trying to sort it out. I love my job, and am very excited to be working again. But it wasn't exactly the first days back that I was expecting!
Here's hoping that next week runs a little smoother... and that my Monday morning screw-up will be a little less epic!! Although I see they are forecasting ANOTHER storm for Sunday, so maybe I will get to enjoy another short week next week! In any event, here's hoping that I get back into the swing of things quickly and start to love my work again... so I don't have to question my return to the working world, and do something crazy... like getting knocked up again!! :)
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