My brother is a very young lawyer; he just graduated from law school and passed the bar exam this year. He works for a much older lawyer. Unfortunately, his boss has decided that, A) since he doesn’t understand technology, it must be magic; B) since it’s magic, it must be able to do anything; and C) since my brother is young, he must understand how to make the magic work.

Boss: “We need a [legal form]. [Brother], go get one from the Internet.”

Brother: “I looked earlier and couldn’t find it. I don’t think it’s available.”

Boss: “No, no! It’s out there, just go get it!”

Paralegal: “[Boss], [Brother] has searched for the form and it’s not available online. Why don’t we call around and see if anyone has a copy they can share with us?”

Boss: “No! This is easy! You should be able to find it online!”

Brother: “Fine, then! If it’s so easy, you do it!”

Boss: “All right, I will!”

The boss storms off, presumably to sit down at a computer and remember that he doesn’t even know how to perform a Google search. Five minutes later…

Boss: “Hey, [Brother], [Paralegal] had a great idea. I think I’m going to call [Other Lawyer] and ask for a copy of that form.”

I work in a legal office. I have had dealings with a client who, to put it generously, is a bit of an odd duck. This client has severe anxiety, and it tends to manifest through unhealthy obsessions with her property. Unfortunately, she is also loaded. She got a huge settlement in her divorce with her rich ex-husband and has more than enough money to fund her obsession.

Each time I have dealt with her, I have spent hours on the phone with her just trying to get basic information from her amongst a deluge of demands for reassurance, crying fits, and verbal diarrhea.

The most recent time she called me up looking for help with a property matter, I was genuinely swamped with work and couldn’t take her on. She asked me to recommend another lawyer, so I did.

The lawyer I recommended her to is an elderly gentleman who very much enjoys the sound of his own voice and makes it very hard to get a word in edgewise. I try very hard not to call him directly because I can never get him off the phone in less than an hour.

It’s a lawyer-client match made in heaven. I have visions of them asleep in their chairs, hands still gripping the phone, because neither of them was willing to end the conversation.

I work at a law firm. I was at work doing worky things. I’d been over to see one of the users in a test group for the latest print code that was waiting to be rolled out to everyone.

It can cause such a stink when it goes wrong that you don’t just give it to everyone for fear that now everyone can’t print. You select a few. And yes, we cherry-pick. If you can form a sentence in a bug report and can remember way, way back into the past two minutes and recall what you did, you get put in the top group. I believe at the time there were five different ways to print. Changes had been made to some part of it and it was out with some test users.

I had just been to the desk of one of these users over some issue she couldn’t work out.

By the time I’d walked back to my desk, a colleague was already on the phone to [User].

Colleague: “Yeah, yeah, he’s just walked in. Hold on.” *To me* “It’s [User].”

Ah, Jesus. What now?

Me: “Hi, [User].”

User: “Hi, [My Name], I can’t print since you’ve been over. I’ve tried everything I can think of and nothing’s working. Whatever you did must have broken it.”

Me: “What do you mean, you can’t print? What way are you trying?”

User: “The new print button and the old one.”

Me: “On the toolbar?”

User: “Yeah”

Me: “Huh. It shouldn’t have affected the old one even if it was broken. Try File and Print, through the dialog.”

User: “Yeah, that’s not working, either.”

Me: “Okay, try the plain Print button.”

User: “Mmm, nope. Nothing.”

Me: “Okay, try Ctrl and P.”

User: “Didn’t work, either.”

Me: “This is weird. Are there any errors on the printer?”

User: “[Coworker]. [Coworker]! Are there any errors on the printer?” *Pauses* “It says load paper.”

Me: “Yeah, I’m going to go ahead and say that’s related. Put some paper in and I’ll wait to check that it’s okay.”

User: “Yeah, that’s worked now. Ooo. It’s printing a lot!”

Me: “Yeah, it’s gonna do that.”

When people apply for disability benefits, there is a lot of documentation needed. My main job is handling the medical records aspect of it.

One day, I notice that the doctor who filled out a form didn’t say when the evaluation was done. This is a really necessary thing so the government can gauge the progression of the disability. I call the client.

Me: “Thanks for sending in the records from [Doctor]. I’m about to submit them to aid your case, but I don’t know the date of the evaluation.”

Client: “What day does it say?”

Me: “There is no date, but I received those on April 15.”

Client: “They’re from my appointment on May 23.”

Me: “I’m sorry, but since they arrived on April 15, they must have been from an appointment prior to April 15.”

Client: “Right! The doctor said he filled them out next week. I’ll send you the forms then.”

Me: “Sir, it is impossible for me to have received an evaluation last month for the appointment you have next week. When was the last time before April 15 that you saw [Doctor]?”

This goes on for five minutes and I am crying at my desk out of exasperation before…

Client: “Did you ever get the records from me seeing [Doctor] on March 8?”

Me: “When did you send them in?”

Client: “April 15.”

I am a real estate attorney and I handle closings on home sales, estate sales — basically anything related to home sales. I have an acquaintance who also does the same thing, so we occasionally meet up at closings, etc. He related this story to me about ten years ago.

He is handling the estate of a man who passed away and left his house to his twenty-five-year-old son. After paying off the remaining mortgage, property, and estate taxes, the son is left with proceeds of about $40,000. My friend draws up a check and gives it to the son. The son is very polite during the whole process and thanks him for his assistance, which has taken several weeks to process. He leaves the office with the check. About a minute later, he comes back in.

Son: “Hey! I was just wondering, instead of this check, would you be able to do an electronic deposit of the proceeds to my checking account?”

Attorney: “Oh, sure, that’s no problem. Just fill out this form—” *pulls a form out of his drawer and hands it to the man* “—and fill out the banking information and all your details. After I enter it into my system, I can process the payment.”

Son: “Oh, great. How long will this take?”

Attorney: “Not long at all! Once you complete the form, I just type in the information into the system and submit the funds transfer. Then it takes twenty-four to forty-eight hours for the deposit to hit your account. Since today is Wednesday, most likely you’ll have the money by tomorrow, but no later than Friday.”

Son: “Perfect, let’s do that!”

They complete the process, which takes about fifteen or twenty minutes. After they’re done, the son thanks the attorney and goes on his way.

Jump ahead a little over a week, and my attorney friend starts getting a bunch of calls from people he’s written checks with during the past week to ten days.

Caller: “Hey, [Attorney], that check you wrote me bounced!”

Attorney: “What?! Are you serious?”

Caller: “Yes, for certain.”

Attorney: “I can’t understand. There’s plenty of money in my account. It must be a problem at the bank. I’ll call them and let you know what’s going on.”

He got almost a dozen calls just like this.

After calling his bank, he found out what had happened. That man who left with the check for only about a minute used the mobile banking app on his phone and made the deposit that way. Then, he came back in, got the electronic transfer money, and ended up with $80,000 instead of $40,000. He then immediately closed his account as soon as he had the money, got a bank check for the balance, and left for somewhere in Europe the next day. This all but wiped out my friend’s checking account. He had almost a dozen check payments that he had to reissue, which took him several weeks to do.

My attorney friend tried for weeks to get the money back, but they were unable to trace where the guy — or his money — had gone, other than that he’d fled the country to Europe, and how they found that out, he didn’t know. He filed a claim with his bank that the check had been fraudulently deposited, but as of the last time I spoke to him a few years ago, he still hadn’t got his money back; it was still being worked on.

He did change his procedures, though. He tells all clients now what their options are for receiving their money, but once they choose one and leave the building, their choice can’t be changed.

Lesson learned, and by me, too! I’ve never encountered this issue, but I follow the same process and am insanely careful about financial procedures in my office.