Try Writing About Dry Cleaning...
From Legal Research? Get Me Sushi, With Footnotes:
A Paul, Weiss partner, Kelley D. Parker, apparently received a subpar order of takeout sushi. So, according to the memo, she asked a paralegal to research local sushi restaurants. The paralegal took to the task aggressively, interviewing lawyers and staff members at the firm, reading online and ZagatSurvey reviews, and producing a three-page opus with eight footnotes and two exhibits (two sets of menus).
You laugh, but I used to get paid to do something extremely similar. I worked for a company that contracted with major employers nationwide to provide "work-life services." Covered employees could call an 800 number and speak with a Master's level counselor about any personal issue, and the counselor would make suggestions, send helpful publications, and possibly send a note to our department for follow-up.
The follow-up was information and referral research, which is fancy talk for "looking stuff up on the internet, and maybe making a phone call if you absolutely have to." My short attention span is extremely limited, so I worked on a number of different "teams" during my time in this department.
I started in child care, finding options for busy and not-so-busy parents in whatever part of the Dallas-Ft. Worth metro area was convenient for them, based on whatever criteria they thought were important (accreditation, hours, curriculum, art classes, no peanut butter, etc.) The information I collected about each provider allowed parents to start making comparisons, and the counselors sent that information back to the parents with publications on how to choose child care. I got bored of asking about child-teacher ratios, circle time, and indoor/outdoor play equipment, so I asked to change teams.
My next team was the "general" team, which I thought would provide me with a more interesting mix of research requests. When our company discussed how we helped employees be more productive, we described assistance with locating child care, elder care, after-school programs, private schools, counseling, support groups (grief, health conditions, children of divorce, etc.), substance abuse treatment - the large personal issues that can indeed conspire to wreck any semblance of balance between home and work, and are excruciatingly time-consuming to handle when you don't know where to start or how to work the system to get the right information.
I was blissfully naive, though, about how much of my time would be consumed by the category known as "convenience" cases.
The worst offenders were employees of a leading professional services firm which shall remain nameless, but these requests came from all of the companies we served. The NYT article describes the sushi memo's path as "circulated by associates and paralegals eager to expose what they see as the capricious and demanding behavior of partners." Trust me, they don't have to be partners to act like that. Then combine it with our company's requirement that we give at least three options for any request, and that we had to write a small paragraph describing each possible resource...I watched my friend M. practically have a seizure trying to write up her research on dry cleaners.
Examples?
- Client will be on a business trip for one day to Chicago, staying at such-and-such posh hotel, needs a gym within walking distance where he can work out that day because he can't break his routine. (The worst part of this one? The hotel had a gym).
- Client relocating to Boulder, wants to find an auto mechanic, private instruction in Russian, dance classes, and a massage therapist near her new workplace. By tomorrow. She's moving in six months.
- Client called previously to find childbirth classes near her home. We sent her information about a class that is 1.6 miles away at the local hospital, but she wants to know if there's anything closer.
- Client's mother in law had the battery go out in her smoke detector, mother-in-law managed to remove it but cannot install the new one, needs someone to go over and replace it (within the next four hours) because client cannot go there until tomorrow to help.
I also found mowing services, grocery delivery services, apartment complexes, corporate housing, banks, local newspapers for subscribing or placing an ad, petsitters, veterinarians, wedding reception sites, wedding planners, post office boxes, and copy shops. I don't remember doing sushi, or manucurists. And despite the rule that convenience cases were not "emergencies" (required 24-hour turnaround), the number that were allowed as emergencies crept up each month I was there.
On any given day, I might have in my queue a case for sliding scale marriage counseling in rural Lousiana, a support group for grandparents whose only grandchild has been diagnosed with a fatal illness, summer day camps in science and math for a bright nine year old girl, and a repeat client who wanted to know if there were any new or different house cleaning services within 20 miles of her home since three months ago when she got information from us the first time.
I don't know if I can convey the sense of entitlement to other people's time and effort that emanated from these requests, no matter how nicely the counselor who submitted the requests tried to phrase them. It would probably take examples of the complaints we would get back if the clients felt we did a less than thorough job, but I didn't store those as well in my memory banks. Rarely did we get a request that said something like "Client has been trying to find someone to do X but has been unsuccessful. Can we find anything else?" I felt like someone's wife rather than a skilled employee. Honey, can you call the petsitter and see if she's available next February? Honey, while you're out today can you see how much it costs to dry clean a shirt at that place on the corner?
I wasn't helping them pressing life concerns so they could focus on their work. I was knocking errands off their to-do list so they could play more golf.
Only two things were more depressing:
First, the endless parade of requests by people who would be relocating and wanted to know where the grocery stores, dry cleaners, and drugstores were. Um, drive around your neighborhood? Talk to your new neighbors? These are the businesses that want to be found, and it's unlikely that you'll starve in the time it would take to find a grocery store. After-school programs with openings, sure, that's hard in a new community. Walgreen's is not. It took you as long to call and ask for this research to be done as it would have to get in the car and find it yourself.
Second, comparing the requests from the elite to the steady stream of requests from employees of the international entertainment company whose (forcibly part-time) workers didn't make enough to pay their utility bills or buy shoes for their kids. Or the request from the VP who was considering a relocation and really had to know if there were therapists in the new area specializing in attachment disorder for his adopted daughter before he could agree to the transfer.
You know, requests where the people truly needed help.
Me Elsewhere
