Hey everyone! Just want to share/vent about my current job. Unfortunately I’m sure some of you relate. This will be long, but I’ll put a tldr at the end!
In December I was laid off from my job of nearly 2 years. It was my first “big girl” job after college. I didn’t enjoy it so it was kinda a blessing in disguise, but also sucked because the reason I was laid off is because they’re outsourcing the jobs overseas. They gave me severance though, so thankfully I was able to not stress too much while finding a job. I was unemployed for 2 months, until February of this year, until I found my current job.
Now I work at a small law firm. It’s just me and 3 other people: me (F24), my boss/lawyer (M68), a contractor lawyer (M67), and a paralegal (M60). I function as a receptionist and paralegal, so I answer the phones and manage the office as well as drafting legal documents and other paralegal duties. The M60 paralegal and I work 8:30-5:30 M-F, completely in office. The 2 lawyers make their own hours and can work from home whenever.
I’ve never worked in law, with people who are much older with me, or in a completely in-office work environment, so I didn’t really know what to expect. But I went in with an open mind. My first day the paralegal tells me as soon as he has the chance about our boss and his “quirks”. Tells me everything I should look out for, how I should act around him, what i should and shouldn’t do, his triggers, etc. He’s been working for him for 20+ years and has seen him do some insane stuff. Obviously at that moment my heart sank into my stomach. Thankfully though, between family, friends, media, etc., I’m pretty good at reading people and handling difficult people. So I kept all of that in mind but tried not to get too anxious over it.
Well, nearly 5 months in and boy, the paralegal wasn’t kidding. This man is unlike anyone I’ve ever met in my life. Completely 100% unique, and in a very bad way. He has most of the characteristics of your stereotypical, older generation business owner, plus his own mental issues that have never seemed to be addressed.
For starters, he acts like a child and is unreasonable almost 100% of the time. If a client requests something or wants a correction to something he did, he takes complete offense to it and will freak out. His and the paralegal’s offices are on the other side of the office, and I constantly hear him yelling and screaming to the paralegal and to himself about anything and everything. He’ll be completely fine and just chilling, and 2 seconds later he’ll be in crazy freak out mode. He overthinks everything, and a simple request, question, etc. will send him into a frenzy. It makes the days when he’s working in-office stressful, with me constantly having to look over my shoulder even though I always do my job and am doing nothing wrong. He is always quick to find something wrong but never ever quick to praise. I’ve been late a handful of times since I’ve started, the most being 15 minutes when I was stuck on the interstate behind an accident. Otherwise the other couple times I’ve been late it was 1-5 minutes. That is literally my only flaw when it comes to this job. And everytime I’m late he has a bad attitude with me for the rest of the day and talks shit about me to the paralegal.
I get 10 days of PTO a year. This includes vacation, sick, and personal time, which is insane to me. But here’s the kicker. If you ask him about taking time off, it becomes an enormous ordeal. I let him know right after I started the job in February that sometime soon I would be moving. Not sure when yet, but I’d let him know as soon as I knew and if I needed to take a day off for it. He said okay thank you for giving me a heads up. Fast forward to the end of April, I sign a lease and the next day tell him about it and that I’ll need May 31st off of work to move. By the way, this was the first and only day I have asked him to take off for in my 5 months of being here to this day. Immediately he starts panicking and saying that he’s not sure because he might need me here (for context, we’re not a busy firm. some days I literally have nothing to do and have to scrounge around for work). To calm him down I told him that when the time comes if I need to come in the second half of the day to help I can. But I said that knowing that they wouldn’t need my help and everything would be fine. After a week of “figuring everything out” he approved me for the whole day, with some disdain in his voice. The day rolls around, I move, I come into work the next Monday and ask the paralegal how everything went. Everything went perfectly fine, as I knew it would.
Fast forward to this week. We get 5 holidays off a year. Memorial day, 4th of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. 2 days for Thanksgiving and Christmas if it’s not “too busy”. The 4th of July is on a Thursday this year, and we’re so so so slow right now. I build up the courage to ask him if we can have Friday off too. We’re not busy, and it’s basically going to be a dead day. Plus we’ve been working really hard and do our jobs well, and have been receiving some great compliments from clients. I ask him, and his demeanor immediately goes dark and he starts interrogating me and going off. “Where did you get that idea from?” “I’ve never done that before, and never heard of a business doing that.” etc. What he said to me and the tone he used was completely disrespectful. Talking to me like I was trash. I had even prefaced the question with “you can say totally say no and don’t feel obligated to say yes, i just figured I’d ask”. He really upset me with how he was speaking to me, so tears start flowing from my eyes. I tell him I’m sorry I even asked, it was just a question. He says he’ll “do some research” and let me know what he decides. He goes to the other side of the office and tells the paralegal to call some of our competitor firms and see what they’re doing Friday. 2 out of the 3 he called are going to be closed. He goes home to work from home the rest of the day, stews on the decision, and calls the contract lawyer to see what he thinks. The contract lawyer and I have become close and he encouraged me to ask for us to have off Friday because he thinks we deserve it. So of course he tells my boss that it’s a good idea. Right before we’re off for the day, he calls me to let me know that he is letting us have Friday off as an act of “appreciation”. I’m thankful that we have off Friday now, but I knew it’d come with a cost. He was planning on coming into the office today, but told the paralegal over the phone that he isn’t now. He feels like he’s “being taken advantage of” and he doesn’t want to come in so he doesn’t “get ugly” with us.
There’s more, but this post is already long. Yes, of course, I’ve been applying to other jobs. Thankfully the contract lawyer said I could use him as a reference. The job itself is great and it’s nice working in a small, quiet office, but it’s not worth being talked down to. If you’ve read this far, thanks for reading. And if you’re in a similar situation to me, please don’t let your boss walk all over you. They have no right to treat you like their property and like trash. I sure as hell am getting out of here.
TLDR:
– Work at a small law firm (me F24, boss/lawyer M68, contract lawyer M67, paralegal M60)
– Boss is volatile, yells and screams about things that don’t matter, quick to scold and very slow to praise, etc
– Gets mad about using PTO
– I asked nicely if we could have this Friday off (day after 4th of july, which is one of the 5 holiday days off we get a year) and he freaked out and made me cry. Gave us the day off but is bitter about it and feels he’s being “taken advantage of”