The Beginning of the End

I posted last night that the beginning was not when Crazy Girl found out about my other blog, but instead, when all the heart problems started last spring. I was mistaken. In thinking about it further, the beginning of the end happened in Florida, before the idea of moving to San Francisco had even occurred to me. It was when I started my slow descent into my nervous breakdown. The one that prompted my brother to invite me to San Francisco for a vacation.

At the time, I was working for the Deputy General Counsel of a sub-prime mortgage company near Fort Lauderdale. When I was offered that job I'd been out of work for a while, and therefore desperate for anything resembling a steady paycheck that was legal. At least it was a steady paycheck. I've often said that I need to respect anywhere that I work, and it's true. I can't be friends with people I don't respect, and I can't work for people or companies I don't respect. Well, I can. But it doesn't go well.

My first sign that this job would be trouble was when I worked a bit of overtime during my first month there. The following morning, I asked if there was a form I had to fill out indicating the overtime. I am a non-exempt employee, wherever I go, as long as I work as an executive assistant, admin assistant, or legal secretary. That means I get paid a salary and am expected to put in a certain number of hours of work each week. By law, anything over that number of hours should result in my getting paid time and a half. In certain circumstances, it should result (again, by LAW) in my getting paid double time. I was told "We don't do that here." I politely and tentatively pushed the issue. "We don't do that for Cindy or Diane (the only other legal secretaries there), so we can't pay you differently, since you have the same title they do."

Totally illegal. But I needed the job. Unemployment had run out, and jobs in South Florida were hard to come by. So I sucked it up, and just decided I would bust ass to get everything done during the hours I was supposed to be there, in an effort to not put in overtime. Unfortunately, my boss was supposed to have an attorney working for him, but he did not. So I was doing all that work in addition to supporting him.

My company had an unofficial policy of denying unemployment to any former employee who applied for it. One of my (unofficial) duties was to review each former employee's file once they applied for unemployment to find a reason to deny them. Then I had to pitch that to the unemployment office. Illegal. My boss, the deputy general counsel, often didn't arrive at work until 11 a.m. Because he was busy sleeping. So while he was sleeping I was (mis)representing myself as part of the legal team to people all over the country. Good times, good times. Was it exciting to realize that I, with my community college associate's degree could do what other people had gone to law school to do? Sure. But it was illegal.

In the middle of all of this, I was reviewing hundreds of resumes pouring in as a result of the ad we had thrown up on Monster. It was pointless though, since the salary for the position was right around $50,000. Just to put that in perspective, I earn more than that now. First year lawyers getting jobs at big name law firms earn six figures. It's widely known that going in-house will earn you less (supposedly in exchange for a calmer lifestyle that won't keep you chained to your desk), but still. I repeatedly told my boss that our target should be some old guy who retired to Florida and was driving his wife crazy being at home and needed to get out of the house. A guy who needed to use his mind but didn't want to bust his ass. A guy who didn't need the money. Especially since the money wasn't there.

My boss refused to consider people like this, and insisted he wanted someone young, with 3-4 years of experience. I always told him people like that want more money than our company was offering. He didn't care. I kept reviewing resumes. Meantime, without that lawyer spot filled, I was given no choice but to step in. I did everything but sign things and show up in a business suit at a court house.

When you work as a legal secretary, the lines should be very clear as to what you are and are not allowed to do. You are allowed to call the Court to set up a hearing. You are not allowed to appear telephonically at that hearing, as you are not a member of the bar. Only lawyers are members of the bar. I was stressed. I was doing things I knew were wrong. I couldn't just go get another job, because I'd been at this one less than a year, and my resume was spotty. I needed the job stability.

Doing what I was put a lot of pressure on me. My boss was basically saying "Do all this illegal stuff, but don't fuck up, because I could be disbarred for allowing it." No pressure.

Did I mention that I had no health insurance? Oh, my company offered it alright. But they paid me so little that I couldn't afford the $70 per month to be taken out of my paycheck. I worked when I was sick, because I couldn't afford not to. I had to leave the building on my lunch hour, so my boss would not come find me and drag me back to my desk, claiming an emergency. (I read the book Fast Food Nation while sitting at the Wendy's across the street from work.) Often I sat in my car on my lunch hour. I brought my lunch from home every day, because I couldn't afford to eat out.

Oh, and did mention that I had no friends? No support system at all? Except for my grandpa who I saw roughly every other weekend. My father's motto has been "Jobs are not supposed to be fun. That's why it's called work. If jobs were supposed to be fun, they'd be called play." So when my grandpa would hug me and ask how work was going, I, having been raised by parents who'd always told me to fake it, would smile brightly and respond, "Great!" Who would want to burden their 85 year old grandpa about something he can't help with anyway? Not me.

I spent twelve years in therapy. As a result, I often take what I call my mental temperature. I wasn't feeling well, in the spring of 2004, but chalked it up to stress at work, and the stress of paying rent that was too expensive. My lease was almost up, and I was preparing to move, which would cost money I didn't quite have.

I started feeling worse and worse. I had a hard time concentrating. I ran over a squirrel one day on the way to work and it took every ounce of willpower I had to keep driving while I called the authorities in charge of picking up road kill. I needed to stop driving and be upset about killing something that had been living, but couldn't risk being late to work. I needed to stop driving and cry and then pull myself together, but didn't have the time. So I arrived at work, emotionally a total wreck.

To put it plainly, I was cracking.