I have mentioned the petty offensiveness of the firms running this project and their total lack of regard for the alleged professionalism of the temps they have hired. Obivously, they have no faith in that professionalism, and they have good reason to believe that -- please see Rule No. 8. The guy to my right in my new, shitty seat is a shining example of why firms think temps are next to worthless and deserve no respect. Yeah, I'm talking about the guy with the mouse nesting in the fat fold on his otherwise shaven scalp. That's right -- Stinky Joe. He and I are reviewing essentially the same type of documents -- a mix of clearly not privileged, maybe privileged, and clearly privileged. Because of Rule No. 10, all of these calls are easy and take a matter of seconds. You throw the first kind into the non-priv pile, and all the rest into the priv pile. This is not rocket science. Will the priv pile include some non-priv documents? Yes. But nobody ever got fired for over-privving. Nothing to see here, people, move on.
So why is this guy literally twiddling his thumbs over clearly non-privileged documents? Seriously, I've never seen anyone twiddle there thumbs who wasn't kidding. This guy will look at a publicly available document -- the very definition of clearly not privileged -- and spend 20 minutes reading it when there is absolutely no fucking way at all that it is privileged. He codes roughly 1/10th as many documents as I do per day. Nobody thinks he is doing anything but ass-dragging in hopes of prolonging the project. He is why we can't have nice things. He is why we get treated this way.
What way? We are getting overtime, but not all that much, relative to how much they want us to work. To get a decent amount of overtime, you have to work 7 days a week, all for hours you could easily have gotten in 6 days. Why? They have shifts of associates and staff attorneys to throw at the project and ensure that all of them get days off. They don't care that we don't. Time was in this business, a 7-days-a-week project meant a minimum of 80 hours, and as much as 115 hours per week, Ours? 73. That's pretty good overtime these days, but you could do 72 in 6 days without breaking a sweat. No real reason not to make that an option, but they put in place daily hours caps that make it impossible.
Internet access? No way in hell. Good temps are actually more productive if they have internet access at their work station, but bad temps aren't. The firms' default position is we are bad temps. No internet, and nowhere near enough internet access teminals.
Plus they keep anouncing other rules. Friday, there was an announcement that we were not to send text messages from our desks. On the other hand, if we leave our desks too much -- defined, I think as "ever, except to pee" -- we also get jacked up. They are essentially attempting to hold us incommunicado. Naturally, folks ignore this kind of directive. We have to communicate with our families, if not our friends.
The firms' response? Put a metric shit ton of staff attorneys on the floor, walking around looking us over like prison floor guards. They are allegedly there to answer substantive questions, but they are primarily there to crack down on texters. How do I know? Well, I never ask questions, but back when I had my great seat -- end of the row, against the windows, wall behind me, no reason for anyone to come down the aisle -- on Friday, I think, I was responding to a text from my wife. A staff attorney came running down the aisle to see why I was looking down, noted that I was texting, and left when I turned around and gave him stink eye. The text I was sending, in response to my wife asking how the project was? "It's like working in a tomb, with prison guards." Thanks for making my point, assholes.
So, anyway, we have no trust, no respect, a prison-like atmosphere and an in-your-face approach of simply uprooting people and moving them to this project or that without even asking if they are interested. Given the number of temps who earn this sort of treatment, I am torn. That doesn't make it any easier to accept.
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