Barry can't spell "respect" -- what, no outrage?

When Dan Quayle, vice president under Bush 41 and one of the media's favorite examples of stupid Republicans, famously misspelled "potato" while at a school spelling bee by putting an e on the end, the media went apeshit. They did not, of course, bother to report that Quayle prompted the student involved to add the e because he was holding a school-provided flash card that spelled the word "potatoe," nor did the media report that Quayle didn't think that was right. Didn't matter. Quayle was an idiot.

Flash forward to a couple days ago at at White House event where Aretha Franklin performed, and when Barry misspelled "respect" during his remarks, the media didn't bat an eye. Never mind that his gaffe proved 1) that he reads from his teleprompter without regard for the content of what he is reading and b) the supposedly pop-culture-savvy president isn't even familiar enough with the sound and meter of Aretha belting out "R-E-S-P-E-C-T" that he would recognize that what he just said sounded wrong. This got reported, but in a very low-key way. I'll just sit back here and wait for the media to go on about what a twit Obama is because of this. I will not, of course, hold my breath.

Actually, I'm not suprised Barry can't spell "respect." After all, he has none for us.

That shit was old

Forgive me for not noticing that that the blog post I linked in the previous post was from 2009. Fuck him. Interesting to me, though, how little things have change. http://www.myattorneyblog.com/ seems to have gotten out of the business at about that time. But what he said about the business still rings true:

For my fellow contract attorneys and tempers still working the salt mines of click-click land, my advice is to get out while you still can. Times are bleak, pay is low, and working hours are getting shorter by the minute – but the legal working situation for temp attorneys is also not going to get any better anytime soon. Contract attorney work is not only a dead end job career wise – but it’ll suck out your soul, pummel your pride, and leave you financially depleted years from now.

Of course, he was writing at the nadir of life in Temp Town, although I am not suggesting things have improved dramatically. Bottom line is, this industry is dying, at least in this town, if not this country. Further, even if it is not dying in this town or this country, it is rapidly becoming non-remunerative and, further, it remains, as it always was, unrewarding professionally. Plus, you'll get no respect, and chicks do not understand what it is you say you do for a living when you try to impress them in bars with the fact that you are a lawyer. So get the fuck out.

This is why they don't trust us

There is a general perception about temps. It consists mainly of the central theme that we can't be trusted. This explains much of the shabby treatment temps get.

That said, temps earn that treatment almost every day. Maybe not all temps, maybe not all the time, but enough to make the rap stick. The other day, the woman about whom I have been warned, in a conversation with another temp, blurted out, "This is document review, there are no ethics."

I have no idea what the conversation was about, but I immediately recognized this as an attitude that is at the root of the problems this industry labors under. In short, temps are not trusted to be professional because far too many temps, even if not a majority, demonstrate through word and deed that they cannot be trusted. Face it, if you were an attorney at the firm employing that temp, and you heard that statement, how would you feel about temps as a group?

Don't cry to me about everybody being unfairly tarred with the same brush. Too many temps take the attitude that, since they aren't really "practicing law" in any meaningful way, they also no longer are bound by the ethical obligations incumbent upon attorneys. They take shortcuts, code documents poorly, lie about their hours, spend hours on the phone when they're being paid to work, blah blah blah blah blah. We've all seen it. Well, guess what? So have the firms that hire us. So don't bitch about getting no respect.