Not Sure I' Am Going To Cut It.

I was assigned a temp secretary job about 5-6 weeks ago. Three temps had gone through the job and left or were let go. I came in and did a great job. I lasted over a month and, when the person I was replacing returned from maternity leave, was asked to stay on as a litigation paralegal. I have prior paralegal experience but no litigation experience.

Yesterday, they gave me two small things to do. I was slow on the first but did much better on the second. Today, they gave me nothing to do and it made me very frustrated. The first project was especially frustrating and, as I was leaving, I was discussing it with a secretary from another department. I thought it would help because part of the problem with the assignment was technical - the attorney insists on working in WordPerfect and then all of this work has to be converted to MS Word. The conversion technology is not very good and, rather than trying to fix the formatting, I had to delete a third of the document, cut a similar section from another document, paste that in and then fix the wording. It took a while to find a similar document to cut the section from.

As I am discussing this with the secretary while walking in the building lobby, who should turn the corner? The attorney who gave me the assignment. I don't know if he heard but I think he did. Part of this is really bad luck on my part. Or, maybe I should have known better to discuss / complain about it. It's not the first time that I have put my foot in my mouth like this. What do you think? In the future, I will have to be much more careful not to complain about anything anywhere near the office.

And, frankly, I am not sure this new position is for me. Its subject matter is nearly totally foreign to me and I am the 7th person to have the position in the last year. It will involve, at times, a lot of overtime (to midnight) and some travel. I may have already blown it with my big mouth. I cannot predict what will happen.

Time will tell, unhappy guy. Yes, he might get mad and tell you not to let the door hit you in the posterior on the way out--or maybe he will realize the frustrations his approach causes and make adjustments. Either way, I think, as you say, you are seeing it is risky to complain to fellow workers too much, especially in a public area. And, it is too early to know the politics of this company, so you won't know who to trust in sharing your concerns and who will immediately blab to the boss. And it is best to politely share your concerns with the person who is causing them, in general.

Let's trust that if this job is meant for you, then you will not lose it. Otherwise.......

Let us know how it goes. It sounds like you have learned an important lesson regardless.

Working for litigation attorneys is heck anyway! They are picky! I don't think it is you, it is the job/situation. I would stay as long as you could, if you want a well enough paying job like that? Just teach yourself that it's not you and your fault when the job becomes untenable?

I think the temp firms and everyone at the law firm knows the score, that it is a hard job to keep people in. That they asked you to stay on and threw you to that particular wolf, says a lot about how well they think of you, that you'd last longer than usual? I substituted for a litigation lawyer when his secretary was on vacation too, and he had me doing extra work for his law school professorship/classes he taught, etc.

Don't take it personally other than to know it's the other person who's impossible, not you who is slow or incompetent. I can't imagine anyone still using WordPerfect anymore; I didn't even think it existed! I loved that software but finally bit the bullet and forced myself to learn Word.