The Loud Typer

Someone should make a reality show about what happens on a document review because when you put 15-20 lawyers in a small room and then have them compete to stay on a project, "interesting" things start to happen. Your average lawyer is already a stressed-out, prickly individual who is more difficult to get along with than the typical person. The types of attorneys who are selected to work on document reviews are even more stressed out than normal because most of us take such jobs out of desperation to pay off crippling student debt, we get no benefits (and thus are more likely to get physically ill), and there is always the likelihood that the project could end early, thus forcing us to scurry for another temp position so that we can make the next rent payment. Add in the fact that we are crowded into these rooms like Japanese commuters on a Tokyo 8 AM subway ride and you create a cauldron of stress - the combined effect of which is probably the reason why document reviews have a tendency to meander into the absurd. (and thus, this blog.)

Out of my team of document reviewers, I have three coders in particular who cause me constant stress. As luck would have it, they all sit next to each. One of them, J2, you may be familiar with as she is the one with the under-sized son who likes to work past 8 pm so she can afford her son's height-enhancing shots. J2 also seems to have a tremendous problem with decision-making and thus, has the (very) annoying habit of continually asking inane questions and then complaining to other people when I tell her that as an attorney she should be able to make decisions on her own as to whether a particular document is relevant. The other two, let's call them X and Y, cause me stress in a different way since, while on their own, they are relatively OK, the two of them can't seem to get along with each other. Thus, the incident I have dubbed the "The Loud Typer Episode"

First, let's describe the characters in our little drama. X, actually, isn't so bad. She's a Jewish girl from Brooklyn, fairly smart, and has a pretty good sense of humour. Occasionally, she gets on my nerves with her constant gossipping, but generally I like her, and although her manner can be somewhat grating, I find her relatively tolerable. Y, in a different context, also wouldn't be that bad. She's a middle-aged women; very large in statute to the point that she is physically imposing (at least to me). She has a mannish appearance to the degree that one coder had to question me about her gender. Nevertheless, she seemed to have a good head on her shoulders and was pretty quiet and didn't bother anyone. However, little did I know that disaster was brewing between the two of them....

The whole messy affair started when we started running out of documents to code. Having documents to review is the bread-and-butter of any document review team; it's what we live on and as long as there are documents coming in, then we know that we are safe from being laid off. Unfortunately, for us, the documents in our case were being produced to us in a staggered fashion and thus, we were only getting roughly 3,000 documents coded a week; an amount that could easily be coded in a day or two leaving the rest of week frighteningly empty of work to be done. To make up for this gap, it was suggested that we give the coders special projects to work on so that we can justify keeping them on. On one such special project, I made the catastrophic mistake of putting X and Y together to work collaboratively on producing a memo.

In hindsight, I should cut myself some slack as I didn't know what an extraordinarily hyper-sensitive person Y was at the time I assigned her work with X. That fact was soon made apparent to me when Y unilaterally decided to work on the project over the weekend (without pay) and then produced a "memo" to me on Monday which was pure crap. I politely told Y to continue working with X to improve the memo and to get back to me with a more finished product. However, when I checked back in with Y later that week, I found that nothing had changed. In a moment of ill-advised frustration, I made the mistake of telling Y that she should work on something else and that X should take over the project. A couple minutes later, after Y handed over her work product to X, I heard X tell her colleague that her work was not that good. I didn't think anything of it at the time, but that sentence unleashed a world of hurt on me that almost got me fired.....

Unbeknownest to me at the time, Y had a side of her that bordered on the psychotic. Immediately after the incident above, she rushed up to HR to complain about X and me. At some point in her meeting with HR, she mentioned the word "harassment" and that's when all hell broke loose. The whole story about how I got called up to HR to explain the situation, how Y confronted me the next day screaming about how I had "embarrassed and humiliated her", how HR tried to pin the blame on me when I suggested that it would be best to move X and Y and Y called my attempt to move her as harassment is probably a blog post for another day ("The Harasser" - forthcoming), but let's just say that the utterance of the word "harassment" threw me into a world of shit with HR, a vortex of pain and stress of which I have barely escaped from....Obviously, despite being a hyper-sensitive sociopath who couldn't write a memo to save her life, Y had learned a valuable survival mechanism in this corporate jungle: when in trouble at work, say the word "harass" to HR and all your problems will magically disappear.

Flash-forward a couple weeks later and I get an email in my inbox from Y. Now this in itself,
is not unusual as ever since the "memo" episode, Y emails me all the time, particularly when I send out my QC reports (quality control reports that list the errors the coders have made). Y has also learned that in the corporate law world, everything is done by paper so you have to survive by building up a paper-trail that shows you are a competent employee. On the other hand, firms build up a paper-trail so that they can justify firing you so you've got to be alert to anything the firm sends you regarding your performance. Ironically, this is exactly what happened to me at Bloomberg, where from the first month I started, I was consistently bombarded with weekly email from my supervisors warning me about my sub-par performance. Again, another post for another day . . .

In Y's email, she notes that she has been concerned by the volume level of X's typing and thinks it might be a good idea if the two of them got new keyboards. Not incidentally, the same complaint had been made to me by X about Y's typing the prior week! Now, while X and Y sit about a few feet away from me, I don't spend my day monitoring the typing volume of team members. If I had to pick, I'd say that Y is probably the loud typer as her mannish hands probably result in a very heavy keystroke. In addition, I've noticed that some days Y comes in a very bad mood and starts slamming her hands down on the keyboard. So all in all, I'd probably say that the offender here is Y and not X.

However, in order to avoid any complications that might involve having to get HR involved again (as I would rather chop off my left nut then have to contact HR about anything), I decide it's best to take Y up on her offer and I order new keyboards for both of them. This time, I try to keep everything in writing and I have the two of them come pick up their keyboards (neither of which seem any different from the old ones). The new keyboards don't make a fuck of a difference. The two are still getting on each other's nerves, but at least it's not going up to HR, so the situation has eased into an careful detente; it's relatively easy to ameliorate the situation by reasoning with X to get her to calm down. With the move coming up this weekend (see yesterday's post "Packed in Like ..") I may finally have the chance to separate the two of them in a way that does not get me reported to HR for being a harasser.

Still, at some point, things are going to have to come to a head with Y. As "team leader", I am in the vulnerable position of being "in charge" and also responsible whenever some goes to complain about my leadership. They wouldn't fire a permanent worker in my position if an underling complained, but I'm not a perm; I'm in the same position as all the other temps here. Thus, I'm in the awkward position of having to keep my "underlings" happy so that I don't get fired. At any moment, I know that Y could go off and run to HR is something goes wrong. It's not a pleasant feeling to have on a day-to-day basis.

In reality, Y is actually probably an OK person - In fact, it was been my experience that, in generally, people are good and want to do good. For the most part, it's just the "lessons" we learn and the trauma we suffer as we struggle to survive in this hyper-competitive world that makes us "bad." I don't know Y's past but I can guess that there is some real pain lurking there as she's obviously been through the corporate law sausage-factory a couple times. I'd like to reason with her and reach an understanding but generally, I found that there is no reasoning with a sociopath like Y; the best thing to do is just try to avoid her and work on building a paper-trail so that I can get rid of her when the times come. My masters have taught me well.