I'm smart enough to make a photocopy, dammit!

It's amazing how much differently people treat you when they assume they are your complete intellectual superior and when they do not.

As many of you know, I'm still looking for a full time job as an attorney, having finished law school last year and gotten admitted to the bar in the beginning of this year. To make sure Sallie Mae doesn't send goons after my ass, I have been taking some random temp jobs to attempt to make ends meet while I interview and send out reams of resumes and whatnot.

My latest temp job, which will mercifully end today, is my third at a law firm. Often on these jobs, I tell people up front my situation because after having done a lot of temping over summers in college and having bad temp experiences in the office where I did my work-study job in college, I know that the usual attitude with temps is stupid until proven otherwise. This time I just didn't feel like bothering to be charming because I had already been here once before to answer phones for an afternoon and had figured out that a) there was no way these people would offer me a job as an attorney because they are fully staffed and b) most of them are stuffy and unpleasant. So, I didn't tell anyone anything about my qualifications (although the office manager and receptionist already knew since I was here before).

People talked to me like I was a moron. The secretary who was "training" me (i.e. showing me where crap is), actually took 5 minutes to explain to me how to mail a letter, among other things. The next day when I had taken over for that secretary, I overheard one of the paralegals ask another secretary to send something out for her and when the secretary said that I had taken over for said paralegal's secretary and she could give it to me, the response was, "this is too important; it has to go to the court. I really need you to do it." I just shook my head to myself and rolled my eyes. One of the attorneys looked scared every time he had to give me something - like I was going to completely screw it up and demons would attack him in his office. He took almost 2 minutes (and I am absolutely not exaggerating one bit) to explain to me the concept of making revisions to a document on the computer from the paper copy he gave to me. Took at least a minute explaining that I needed to insert a new heading. Now, even without my fancy expensive law degree that is collecting figurative and literal dust, I can do these tasks. I could do them when I was in high school. I can also read and walk. I know. It's crazy.

I did let people know one by one that in fact I am an attorney if it came up in conversation. It is AMAZING how differently they each treated me when they found out. The secretaries and paralegals (with the exception of one who decided I was her own personal intern and kept giving me her crap work that she didn't want to do) each apologized for not treating me differently. One apologized for being condescending. One paralegal now says please when she asks me to do anything and acts like it's a huge favor I'm doing for her. The other talks to me more and is much friendlier.

I'm not sure if I bothered to tell the younger attorney because he didn't come near me much either way. The older one (the one afraid of demons) has not treated me differently at all. But I wonder about him. He seems to be a little slow and deathly afraid of change. He's shocked every time I tell him what he wanted done is already done when he checks on my progress; can't seem to grasp why I, a highly educated and computer literate 27-year-old, have not learned how to take short-hand and can't handle things not being where he's used to them on the desk I'm sitting at. Of course, he also made me fetch him water multiple times and has made me look for a file for him when I told him I knew it was in his office just because he couldn't be bothered to spend 10 seconds doing something he thinks is a secretary's job, so in addition to thinking he's a little bit in need of a helmet, I also think he's a dickhead.

What's the point of this post you ask? Well,
1. My little mini-sociology experiment seems to point to the conclusion that most people seem to assume too much too quickly and that can make them suck.
2. I don't like temping.
3. Despite offering to help multiple people multiple times today, I ran out of work an hour and a half ago.