Great moment at work!

On my first or second day at work, Boss sent me to the Courthouse to reset about 4 cases. At the time, I had no idea what it meant to “reset a case.” There was one court coordinator, I’ll call him “Gunther,” who was a regular old asshole to me. It was my first time asking for a reset and was very unsure of myself. He snapped at me and yelled at me (well, wisper-yelled, court was going on at the time). Later, at the office, I was frazzled. A little later I found out Gunther is a good friend of Boss. Not just an acquaintance or a guy he works with, but a long time friend. He is also a nice guy, I just caught him at a bad time. For about 3 or 4 weeks, I got at least 4 apologies a week from him. Now he limits himself to apologizing when I see him in person.

Well, that’s just background for what happened last week.

Boss calls me to that court to take care of something. He was in the middle of a hearing on a motion to suppress. He lost. The client was Pissed! He went on and on about firing him, how he wasn’t doing enough, didn’t know what he was doing, etc. Soon it was only me, Boss, Ranting Client, and Gunther in the court room. After a few minutes of chatting with Gunther (while Ranting Client is still ripping into Boss) about how his office remodel is going, he says “let get some ice cream.” WTF? I know it’s pretty hot, but taking off in the middle of the day for ice cream? Thinking he was just kidding around, as he likes to do, I follow him (leaving Boss alone Ranting Client). He took me to the Judge’s chambers where the judge, all her staff, a couple other defense attorneys and some persecutors were all sitting around in a big circle and… eating ice cream. What is Ex.Coll to do? Grab a bowl and have some ice cream. About 15 minutes later, in comes Boss looking for his ice cream. There was plenty.

I think most people not in the legal profession would be shocked to see opposing lawyers sitting around BSing with the judge that just heard their arguments. That’s just the way the law is. The fact is the vast majority of defense attorneys will be in the same court room just very soon and very often, ditto for the prosecutors. These are people that work together day in and day out, it only make sense to befriend them. If it were all like Law & Order, it would make a pretty bad work environment.