i'm spartacus

[fox]

cast of characters:

T, important senior partner
B, important less-senior partner
E, junior partner
G, senior associate not appearing in this drama
R, mid-level associate not appearing in this drama
D1, manager of my department
D2, deputy to D1
self
H, secretary to A, important senior partner not appearing in this drama
M, my underling

received yesterday from T, addressed to me, cc'd to B, E, D2, and M:

Hi Fox and M:

Please be prepared to explain to B and E tomorrow why a Federal Express package from opposing counsel that was delivered by H to the workroom last week on July 6 or 7 sat unopened and unreported until about an hour ago. At that point, we found out that the opponent had filed a paper last week and sent it to us by Federal Express. As I understand it, we then contacted the workroom and there the package sat.

That unopened package contained a paper by [defendant] that we had been waiting to receive all of last week. A reply is due today, and we are urgently attending to that now. So we cannot confer with you today to get to the bottom of this and find out any further facts of which we are unaware, but this is a very serious breakdown in our system which must never happen again.

I am leaving town today at 6 PM to visit another client and cannot sit in tomorrow to go over this situation. But B and E fully understand the gravity of this situation and will represent me at the meeting. Maybe we misunderstand the facts, but we must find out why this happened and how we can assure that it never happens again.

D2: since you are sitting in for D1, I suggest that you be at the meeting also. E will notify everyone of time and place.

T

short version: Holy CRAP did you screw up! You don't KNOW how badly you screwed up! JFC there is no DESCRIBING the seriousness of this screwup! signed, T.

within minutes, my response:

Hi everyone --

I obviously take full responsibility for our failure to distribute the paper in question immediately. We received a number of pleadings from H last week, and while we can't always recognize the relative importance of one paper or another from its title, there's no question that everything should be distributed promptly. In the past, as I understand it, there's been some confusion about distributing hard copies of papers that have previously come in via the fax server -- but I have explained that it's far preferable to distribute a document twice than not at all. Additionally, there are some pleadings that are not to be distributed to the client, and we don't know which these are -- but there's no reason we can't distribute all documents to the team even before we hear back from R and/or G about whether the client gets them or not.

All of the above seems second nature, but I shouldn't have assumed when I handed off the IOCs that what was obvious to me was obvious to anyone else. It will not happen again.

Fox

short version: you're right. i did screw up. it was me, my fault, i totally dropped the ball. won't do it again. it won't happen again. by which i mean, i -- the person whose fault it was -- won't allow it to happen again. signed, fox.

so i have a date to be yelled at this afternoon at 3:00 tomorrow at 2:00, which should be fun. but the thing is, i don't actually dread it at all. because i my team did fuck up. and as the manager-type person of the team, it was up to me to make sure we didn't fuck up, which i failed to do. so there's nothing for it but to admit the fuckup and take the drop in cred that comes with having to prove to them that i'm qualified not to let it happen again.

in general, though, i'm not that worked up about it. because, as you all know, i'm all about only blaming the person who's actually responsible. (which, in this case, would be me.)

Comments

[lexin.livejournal.com]

Ouch. My sympathies - I have had this kind of thing happen to me (like when I accidentally sent a draft of regulations with an earlier date on to the Minister of Magic to be signed and not the real McCoy) and it's not nice.