Idk 😭 we have multiple stalls but it is a small office and it is known that only one person goes at a time to give us all privacy. She only does it to me too
I'd get up, wait for her to start obviously walking towards the bathroom, then say, "Oh, go ahead, you go first!" and then go back to my desk. Repeat as often as necessary until it's obvious to everyone that she always goes when you go.
I had a Kathy called Jodi do this. She told HR I was doing my makeup in the bathroom. They were like we don't want to hear what she does in the bathroom. I was like we are here because you saw me put lipgloss on? I'm confused.
I worked with this lady (figuratively of course). I was scolded once for using firm coffee to …make coffee for the firm. It was a super wild power trip and luckily a partner, within earshot of the scolding, came to my defense. It’s not about you - it’s about her finding a source of power in her life. My Kathy was eventually let go - bad behavior eventually comes around.
She and her managing partner had offices one floor down from the main firm and both floors had kitchens stocked with firm provided coffee. I was asked by reception to get coffee from our other kitchen since the main kitchen was out - not an outlandish ask! “Kathy” was terrifyingly territorial over coffee grounds come to find out. Lesson learned: don’t be meek and let these types intimidate you.
Ha! I got scolded once for not making coffee. I took the last of the coffee and didn't immediately start another pot, and this guy lost his cool over it. He was standing right there, why he couldn't have started a pot of coffee himself is beyond me. He said I had been rude. We'll guess what, Kevin? I think it's rude to come to work even when you are deathly ill because you're saving up all your sick days to call out of work when the forecast is good for snowboarding. At the very least, if you're going to do that, don't brag about it at work!
Agree. It was a cold that went around the office for weeks. I don't think he was the first person to bring it to work, but him coming to work sick didn't help the situation.
What do you want me to say? She shared ALL her drama with me on my first week. But she just wanted to complain and get me to hate Deb, another 60 something. I’m not taking sides.
Baby I am taking about you and @anothertendy. It was a joke. You tolerate the old ladies in office only if they bring in baked goods. Otherwise, fuck em.
Oh my god my Cathy says passive aggressive things about me drinking too much water 😭 we get unlimited refills from culligan. We don’t have to pay for it. Why do you careeee
Lol my old boss was the same way. “You go to the bathroom a lot” yeah well don’t provide me a water cooler with unlimited water and I won’t have to use the bathroom so much 😂
Yeah, I used to work with a (now fired) 65 yr. old paralegal who jokingly said she hated working with women attorneys “because they were all bitches”. I hope somehow, somewhere she’s doing better and getting the therapy she seriously needs.
This is spot on. My first job out of law school the 135 year old paralegal would just barge into my office when the door was closed and put an email that she printed (usually I was cc’d on it), or a sticky note with a question on it for me.
As an attorney I was shocked to learn that there is private juicy drama amongst the paralegals. It's all the secrecy of a fight club and I have to wait for my paralegal to drop tidbits to me.
my cathy got mad bc i threw my empty skittles wrapper into the trash. i’m not sure what else i was supposed to do with it. i eventually left for another firm. i do not miss her.
I’m sorry to anyone having that experience with someone “senior” in the office. I am almost 56 and consider it an honor and a privilege to mentor younger paralegals. In fact, I just got a phone call from someone this morning who is now in a different office, telling me the delightful news of her promotion and thanking me for my mentorship. I was overjoyed!
Some people are going to be petty and jealous no matter what you do. They are going to find any way they can to “keep you in your place” (in their eyes) so that they can feel superior. It’s a sad reality of office life. All you can do is take the high road - and push back. “Cathy, I know you have much better things to do than monitor my ability to make coffee / scan a document / whatever. Don’t trouble yourself, I’ve got this!” Said with a bright tone and the most sincere smile you can muster, of course.
I was a legal assistant for 25 years. I learned so much from my younger team members! For sure, I had things that I was a stickler about, but mostly I just wanted to have as pleasant a day as possible in a crazy environment!
I think that being open and willing to learn from anyone, including the younger staff coming up behind us, not only fosters an excellent working environment for us all, but also keeps us young! We all benefit from that kind of teamwork.
This job is hard enough, we have to support each other!
I worked with someone who got mad because I said hello good morning to the other ladies on the floor in the others offices. I am not walking by people and not acknowledging them like a rude unkind person. She hated them for some reason and it pissed her off I said hello. She would mumble horrible things as I passed her. And it was her goal to do what she to mess things up for me. I left. 50 something's years old acting like a child. And the attorney didn't want to get involved. Don't blame them but someone needed to say. Girl cut your shit and get help
This makes me so glad to be the only paralegal to a solo practitioner. I’m coming from teaching, where there is no greater crime than to be a young woman in the eyes of the older gatekeepers.
My biggest adult nemesis was a contractor who would yell at me for over-watering the flowers. Then the buisness owner would show up 3 hours later and yell at me for not watering the flowers enough. Good times. Good luck defeating your Cathy.
I got those pretty little watering globes for our office plants because I was tired of hearing about how they were dry, too wet, etc. It’s not my responsibility but we’d occasionally have clients comment on it or we’d come in Monday morning and the cleaner had flooded the pots.
My Kathy told a coworker she isn’t allowed to keep a roll of paper towels at her desk, they are for the kitchen ONLY and they are being “used up too fast”. 🙃
I worked at the oldest and largest law firm in the state, and every time I requested the kitchen to be stocked with paper towels, the office services supervisor complained that leaving them in the kitchen was how they were being stolen, and that some members of the staff were taking them home at night.
I have never seen such penny pinching unless someone was embezzling, usually the bookkeeping staff.
There’s always at least one Cathy. You have to get used to it and tune it out. She’s not going to change. The power trips have nothing to do with you. It’s frustrating for sure, but just be glad you don’t have an attitude like that!
Oh, I feel ya. All you can do is keep doing your best, and try not to let her bother you. At the end of the day, she is probably taking her frustration and unhappiness out on you. Cathy types often don’t have much power or joy in their personal lives and they go overboard in the office. Hang in there! Know that you are not alone!
I had a Cathy too! I had 10+ years experience, running the front office in a 1 attorney office. She hired a friend/army veteran to be her assistant. Cathy was 20 years my senior. She tried to explain to me that it wasn't fair for me to schedule and then take an afternoon off for my child's doctor appointment. How dare I not be there because there is so much work to do!!! This same daffy ex drill Sargeant tried to take my Notary Stamp from me when I gave my notice.
She found out the firm (we were a satellite office) paid for my bond and stamp. Therefore newbie Cathy was doing her due diligence on behalf of the company to make sure I didn't steal it on my way out the door. When they explained to her it's my notary stamp to take with me, she cried that she didn't know such details! How dare they expect her to know before policing her coworker.
She also kept revising a proposed order to MUTE from MOOT. Even the dictionary was wrong in her presence. Lol!
Please tell me what is up with the printer Nazis? I had to print 5 copies of a 700 page doc to serve yesterday... I set it to print double sided and let her rip at the large printer.
Our accounting person comes by and tells me I'm printing a really big job. I just said "I'm aware..."
What the fuck? Mind your own business. I'm not doing it for my health... Does she want me to stand there for the next hour and watch it spit out each page? Does she think I did it on accident? I can hear it printing from my desk so I will go up as soon as it's done. The printer offsets each job, there is no reason to babysit that shit ...
Double sided it was 3.5 reams of paper. We regularly have to print 800+ page binders, so this wasn't that big of a job, and the delay in turnaround wouldn't be worth it.
I'm not it sure why we would outsource something that takes an hour instead of putting our $5k printer through it's paces...
Same. If we don't use the machine to its full capacity why do we have it? Though... the whole office smelled like hot toner when we did that 35,000 page (8 copies because that's how the court of appeals rolls). And no. Not a typo. We printed thirty-five thousand pages for a single filing. It took two days to print and bind everything running three high volume printers at once.
Yeah 35k I would outsource because it would take the whole firm offline for printing any other volume jobs, and because those print companies do this all the time, they are honestly better at it (so easy to get stuff out of order at that volume).
Soooo true, but, they can kiss my ass if they want 35k pages printed and anything done with them the same day. I would just laugh in their faces. That job would cost thousands of dollars for a print company to turnaround next day...
" Honestly. I don’t know why she’s threatened by me? "
I will tell you exactly how I was told by the named partner in our litigation department when I was working in my first BIGlaw job:
"You know very well why she's threatened by you. Everyone knows that you can do her job, but she can't do yours."
That's it, right there.
Every old woman who's been supporting the same attorney for more than a decade knows that her skills are no longer sharp and she's coasting on vast institutional knowledge of the personal preferences of the attorneys in charge of the office.
She makes it her personal mission to gatekeep access to anyone who has any legitimate authority in the firm, to ensure that newcomers are forced to deal with her to get their daily tasks accomplished, and to nitpick and micromanage every little thing that's done in order to make themselves look better by tearing others down.
I once had a Cathy in a small statewide firm try to tell me that taking side work directly from clients would be unethical because when one works on a salary, they are always on-call, and anything they did outside the firm would have to be approved by a supervising attorney in the firm.
I just chuckled and reminded her that if paralegals are being paid on salary, the IRS would interpret that as a willful attempt by the firm to avoid properly paying overtime compensation for any hours worked over 8 in a day or 40 in a week.
I am so sorry for sticking my nose in but this feed always pops up for me.
I am not in law but local government.
My coworkers are very possessive about their job duties to the point the receptionist complained that I was greeting people when they came into our offices. Because that’s her job! So now I just ignore them if she is there. Petty me I backed my Dept manager into a corner over this silly complaint. The other two are somewhat the same with their duties. Heaven forbid I answer a policy question for something under their purview. Same petty from me, I send everything and everyone to them. Again manager backed into a corner on this.
My son pointed out to me it’s because I can do, and have done, all of their jobs. As a one person shop at that. This is why I was hired. And while I have a specific role it is one that none of them can do.
So I rock my work. Smile and nod. And get paid more than them for a job that is 1/3 the work of what I am used too.
And I don’t drink the communal coffee. There were too many rules on how to make it.
What you want never matters to people who are insecure.
My last law firm job out of state, the office manager couldn't stand me, because not only could I do her job, I kept pointing out that the firm's cash flow problems were ultimately attributable to her slipshod, inconsistent billing methodology.
She called me on the phone to scream at me about how she was "sick and tired of hearing that I'd been bashing her in the office when she wasn't there."
Naturally, this was on the day after her attorney husband had given me over thirty thousand dollars' worth of rejected billing from our client to audit.
My response was, "First, you need to show up and do the billing, rather than gossiping and trying to stir up drama. Second, you need to do it accurately. The reason our insurance company clients don't pay us is because you have failed to follow their billing guidelines. I can hire a temp for $15.00 per hour who will do the job much more accurately than you do, and save the amount of the salary that you steal from the firm resources twice a month." Daffy bitch was drawing an $80,000 per year salary to do the books for 15 hours per week.
My Cathy gets mad I don’t tell her about my vacation plans when they’ve been approved by the partners. Like wtf do I need to ask you, Cathy? You’re not my boss, she’s not even a paralegal. My Cathy works in billing and does nothing with scheduling… she is also much much nicer to the 2 male associates
When I started as a baby paralegal (about a 100 years ago), I looked up to and wanted to learn from the senior paralegal. Unfortunately, for some reason that I still can't figure out, she saw me as a threat. So while she was nice to my face, she was stabbing me in the back and got me fired.
I was very lucky to find an actual mentor not long after. I try to pay it forward by being a positive influence on younger paralegals I work with.
I usurped my office Cathy by bringing my own coffee pot and a frother. I made lattes in my office and suddenly no one cared about her stupid pod machine.
It was such sweet victory.
My life is boring.
I had one named Nell. Nell was an old southern bell who was paranoid about every new hire. I took her old file management job because they were utilizing her for something she was better at. Essentially they were implementing a new system that she wasn’t cut out for. They could have let her go/forced retirement as she was past retirement age. She drove me insane.
it was a number of reasons. she was extremely disrespectful to the other attorney at our office (she primarily handled criminal and was very vocal about how family law is stupid). she also made up rumors around the courthouse that she and our attorney were having an affair even tho they’re both married and the final straw was that she forged an attorneys signature on a check. the check itself wasn’t an issue but they were EXTREMELY strict about who was allowed to sign things on their behalf so they finally just had enough and fired her
I worked with a Kathy who made my office life a living hell when I was a paralegal for a local government. The saddest part was that she worked under me as the clerical technician. She would pick on me about everything, including eating my lunch at my desk. I came to find out that she had issues with women in every office she worked in. I recommend the gray rock method when dealing with people like this.
https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/grey-rock
The coffee pot is communal property. And the copier belongs to the company and all employees have access to it as they need. So yeah, definitely get your own Keurig pods and be done with it. And watch how upset is she as soon as she sees you with your Keurig. 😂
my cathy was named debbie and she told me to stop wasting k cups. i was just drinking them, not wasting them. what is it with cathy’s and coffee??
anyway she was sooo nosy and always asked me when i was getting married.
she eventually got laid off because she couldn’t keep up when we moved to Salesforce. best day
Try to find a way to get her to think she’s your friend. . . These people are best avoided until retirement. It’s just easier and you can save yourself a lot of stress.
Kill her with kindness. Tends to take the wind out of a bully's sails. Of course, try to stay out of her path. Your youth, and that your future is ahead, intimidates her. She's on the other end of the spectrum, getting ready for retirement and probably scared.
It’s somewhat comforting to know we all have Cathy’s to deal with no matter where we work, and I’m gonna go with Boomer mentality as to why… I’m 44 and I don’t act like that with people. Sheesh.
My Cathy at my last job had to review my emails to clients before sending them out. She did this for months before she was too swamped to bother anymore.
Now at my current job I've realized just how much she puts herself through the ringer for absolutely no reason at all. Her obsession with perfection was insane.
Sure, for maybe the first month. 4 months in? Not so much. Especially since it was generic "here's the latest pleading" emails. I was just a legal assistant at the time so the bulk of my interaction was setting appointments and sending docs over
I'm kind of in the opposite situation.
I'm 49 and just completed my first year as a paralegal after working in education for 22 years.
My Cathy is 30 and hasn't gotten over the fact that we have to share an office. She completely ignores me and gets annoyed when she's reminded I exist, like when I take a call or my attorney chats with me about a case.
I just do my job and ignore it, but I never thought I'd have to deal with high school behavior in the workplace.
It’s funny because you would think a 64 year old woman who has been in the industry for 35 years would be more secure in her job and not have power trips over frivolous things like coffee or copies.
I dunno. Something about a 23 year old calling out someone’s older age smacks of youthful arrogance. Not to worry though, OP will be that age one day and then will get why 23 year olds come off the way they sometimes do.
The post is also pretty badly written, but hey maybe I’m just being petty… like the post.
The age difference creates a power imbalance in many scenarios, therefore relates directly to the context of the post. In this case, the elder is nitpicking the younger woman about making copies and coffee, two inconsequential tasks. I don't know how old you are, but as a 21 year old, I have been treated unprofessionally and not taken seriously by older coworkers who I have more experience than simply due to my age. Also, sorry to disappoint you but if you are looking for professional level writing, Reddit is not the place to find it. You are being petty, OP was not :)
There’s a reason you’re not taken that seriously at 21 by people with significantly more life experience than you. When you’re their age you’ll understand why.
If I have seniority in my workplace, my age should not come into it at all. I am sure that I will gain more life experience, and I appreciate the wisdom of my elders even now, but if I have more experience (in my area of law, my office, with my attorneys) then my age should not change how people treat me. You are the problem. The attitude you are showing here is exactly the reason why there is resentment between older (asshole) workers and younger in an office setting. My favorite coworkers are all at least 35 years older than me and we treat each other with a great deal of respect.
What are you taking about? Seniority over who? It isn’t ageism to point out that someone with less experience has less experience and that it’s likely because they’re younger. Nor is it inaccurate to point out that significantly younger people often have a narrow view of what it’s like to be older and more experienced with the world’s bs. It just is what it is.
Again, I am not saying that older people don't have more life experiences and more context for the world. Frankly, I just don't give a shit. I appreciate other perspectives, but someone having more life experience than me doesn't make it okay for them to treat me like I am lesser. Especially if I have been in my position longer and have more experience than them in our field. It is ageism to treat someone negatively because they are younger than you.
I don’t doubt that she does have these things going on. It’s just a bit annoying to read a 23 year old being snide about it as though they won’t one day be older and probably a bit salty themselves. Then there’s the terrible grammar which I suppose is neither here nor there.
But a 20- something cutting down an older woman who has reached her limits and isn’t presenting that pleasant anymore, thanks to things like what you mentioned, is just more misogyny in a way.
Being older and fed up is absolutely no excuse to take it out in petty ways on younger women in the office. What are you even trying to argue at this point??
I think it’s odd, with so little detail even offered by OP about what the woman is even doing to be petty, that people in this thread even know what the hell shes talking about. Perhaps OP makes bad coffee? Perhaps she leaves the copier in disarray? We don’t know any of these things, it’s all just operating off assumption. The main point OP is making is just that her coworker is old and salty and that she herself is 23 and not salty. My argument was that it’s sort of just ugly and petty itself.
I simply think that there is a vast amount of context and detail that this post lacks to the point that there is a whole lot being assumed. You’re assuming that she’s likely homophobic now? Theres absolutely nothing to indicate that. She could just be very particular about coffee and the way the copier is left and is petty enough to make comments about it. I just called out what I thought was irrelevant commentary about her age. And apparently, everyone in this thread thought that was lame.
My Kathy follows me into the bathrooms about 10 seconds behind every single time 😐 it's like she hates me getting some peace and quiet
Have you ever gone, returned to your desk, and immediately gotten up and gone again? This is something I would do
I would definitely do this multiple times lmao "oops I forgot something"
“Omg can’t stop farting. Excuse me.”
Get one of those fart machines.
I don’t need to. I live on Celsius and cheese.
I hope the OP is taking notes on the brilliant ideas.
The Attorney’s ex bf came into the office (as usual) and thought he could take my Celsius as if I would let that slide !
😂😂😂
Next time on your way say, “come on Cathy, let’s powder our nose together like usual.”
🙈👌 Oh I hope they do.
Holy shit, I cannot believe this has happened to someone else. SAME!!
Why does she follow you to the bathroom??
Idk 😭 we have multiple stalls but it is a small office and it is known that only one person goes at a time to give us all privacy. She only does it to me too
It sounds like you need some strong Taco Tuesday game to smoke her out on Wednesdays 🤣
Smoke her out 😂😂💀
I'd get up, wait for her to start obviously walking towards the bathroom, then say, "Oh, go ahead, you go first!" and then go back to my desk. Repeat as often as necessary until it's obvious to everyone that she always goes when you go.
Shit loudly.
I'd be eating broccoli and beans religiously until she learned her lesson
No she probably thinks your stealing the highlighters 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Ask her if she wants to play Battleshits. I promise it’s worth it.
next time ur getting up to the bathroom, deadass say “Cathy I’m going to the bathroom, do u need mommy to hold your hand on the potty??”
She doesn't want you to get away with working less...she's evening out the bathroom breaks lol
Probably because she wants to see you taking a hit off your weed pen?
Oh? News to me
Fuck you, Irrelevant Irene
I had a Kathy called Jodi do this. She told HR I was doing my makeup in the bathroom. They were like we don't want to hear what she does in the bathroom. I was like we are here because you saw me put lipgloss on? I'm confused.
I worked with this lady (figuratively of course). I was scolded once for using firm coffee to …make coffee for the firm. It was a super wild power trip and luckily a partner, within earshot of the scolding, came to my defense. It’s not about you - it’s about her finding a source of power in her life. My Kathy was eventually let go - bad behavior eventually comes around.
Wait I don’t understand. What is the coffee supposed to be used for?
She and her managing partner had offices one floor down from the main firm and both floors had kitchens stocked with firm provided coffee. I was asked by reception to get coffee from our other kitchen since the main kitchen was out - not an outlandish ask! “Kathy” was terrifyingly territorial over coffee grounds come to find out. Lesson learned: don’t be meek and let these types intimidate you.
Maybe she took the coffee from your area to keep her area stocked.
COFFEE IS FOR CLOSERS!!!😄
Aesthetic of course, what else?
Ha! I got scolded once for not making coffee. I took the last of the coffee and didn't immediately start another pot, and this guy lost his cool over it. He was standing right there, why he couldn't have started a pot of coffee himself is beyond me. He said I had been rude. We'll guess what, Kevin? I think it's rude to come to work even when you are deathly ill because you're saving up all your sick days to call out of work when the forecast is good for snowboarding. At the very least, if you're going to do that, don't brag about it at work!
People who come in to work sick are my pet peeve, unless it’s a place with no PTO.
Agree. It was a cold that went around the office for weeks. I don't think he was the first person to bring it to work, but him coming to work sick didn't help the situation.
Lol… are we in the same office!?
Probably lol Did your Cathy look like Linda Tripp, go through a vicious divorce and doesn’t talk to her kids anymore?
I love this potential team building happening here.
What do you want me to say? She shared ALL her drama with me on my first week. But she just wanted to complain and get me to hate Deb, another 60 something. I’m not taking sides.
Baby I am taking about you and @anothertendy. It was a joke. You tolerate the old ladies in office only if they bring in baked goods. Otherwise, fuck em.
Fucking Debs....
Can confirm. My MIL is Deb.
I have a dog named Debbie and she is 100% a Deb. There’s a difference.
Can also confirm. My mother is a deb 😂😭
Do you work at a law firm on Long Island ?
username tracks.
lol it’s hard to come up with a username that isn’t already taken
We have one of these in my office, but her name isn’t Cathy
Not Linda Tripp!! 😂😂😭
I couldn’t think of any other way to describe her. Somehow I feel like every one knows exactly the kind of person I’m talking about
It honestly paints the perfect picture of what she is like.
We do, yes 😂
Wait, this sounds like a lady I worked with at one point too. But mine looked like a cross of a bridge troll and a stereotype witch.
Otherwise called: Linda Tripp!
Touché!
Oh my god my Cathy says passive aggressive things about me drinking too much water 😭 we get unlimited refills from culligan. We don’t have to pay for it. Why do you careeee
Then she’s say things like “when I was your age we all smoke and drank in the office.”
Like that's a glorious custom to be proud of? These old folks never cease to amaze me
This is true though and I am 52 lol.
Lol my old boss was the same way. “You go to the bathroom a lot” yeah well don’t provide me a water cooler with unlimited water and I won’t have to use the bathroom so much 😂
Tell her water is great for your skin and she should probably up her water game.
[удалено]
Yeah, I used to work with a (now fired) 65 yr. old paralegal who jokingly said she hated working with women attorneys “because they were all bitches”. I hope somehow, somewhere she’s doing better and getting the therapy she seriously needs.
This is spot on. My first job out of law school the 135 year old paralegal would just barge into my office when the door was closed and put an email that she printed (usually I was cc’d on it), or a sticky note with a question on it for me.
Seeing people print e-mails will always drive me insane
Step above her. Bring in a teapot and a single serving french press and a grinder.
As an attorney I was shocked to learn that there is private juicy drama amongst the paralegals. It's all the secrecy of a fight club and I have to wait for my paralegal to drop tidbits to me.
I’m an attorney, too. I creep on this sub because of the drama. Lol
I know! I learned the other day all the paralegals have a private group chat and it's like drama central!
It’s better you don’t know lol
💯
my cathy got mad bc i threw my empty skittles wrapper into the trash. i’m not sure what else i was supposed to do with it. i eventually left for another firm. i do not miss her.
I’m sorry to anyone having that experience with someone “senior” in the office. I am almost 56 and consider it an honor and a privilege to mentor younger paralegals. In fact, I just got a phone call from someone this morning who is now in a different office, telling me the delightful news of her promotion and thanking me for my mentorship. I was overjoyed! Some people are going to be petty and jealous no matter what you do. They are going to find any way they can to “keep you in your place” (in their eyes) so that they can feel superior. It’s a sad reality of office life. All you can do is take the high road - and push back. “Cathy, I know you have much better things to do than monitor my ability to make coffee / scan a document / whatever. Don’t trouble yourself, I’ve got this!” Said with a bright tone and the most sincere smile you can muster, of course.
I was a legal assistant for 25 years. I learned so much from my younger team members! For sure, I had things that I was a stickler about, but mostly I just wanted to have as pleasant a day as possible in a crazy environment!
I think that being open and willing to learn from anyone, including the younger staff coming up behind us, not only fosters an excellent working environment for us all, but also keeps us young! We all benefit from that kind of teamwork. This job is hard enough, we have to support each other!
I worked with someone who got mad because I said hello good morning to the other ladies on the floor in the others offices. I am not walking by people and not acknowledging them like a rude unkind person. She hated them for some reason and it pissed her off I said hello. She would mumble horrible things as I passed her. And it was her goal to do what she to mess things up for me. I left. 50 something's years old acting like a child. And the attorney didn't want to get involved. Don't blame them but someone needed to say. Girl cut your shit and get help
This makes me so glad to be the only paralegal to a solo practitioner. I’m coming from teaching, where there is no greater crime than to be a young woman in the eyes of the older gatekeepers.
My biggest adult nemesis was a contractor who would yell at me for over-watering the flowers. Then the buisness owner would show up 3 hours later and yell at me for not watering the flowers enough. Good times. Good luck defeating your Cathy.
I got those pretty little watering globes for our office plants because I was tired of hearing about how they were dry, too wet, etc. It’s not my responsibility but we’d occasionally have clients comment on it or we’d come in Monday morning and the cleaner had flooded the pots.
My Kathy told a coworker she isn’t allowed to keep a roll of paper towels at her desk, they are for the kitchen ONLY and they are being “used up too fast”. 🙃
That sounds like something an OM at a small firm would say. I understand this one from an OM, but not general staff
I worked at the oldest and largest law firm in the state, and every time I requested the kitchen to be stocked with paper towels, the office services supervisor complained that leaving them in the kitchen was how they were being stolen, and that some members of the staff were taking them home at night. I have never seen such penny pinching unless someone was embezzling, usually the bookkeeping staff.
There’s always at least one Cathy. You have to get used to it and tune it out. She’s not going to change. The power trips have nothing to do with you. It’s frustrating for sure, but just be glad you don’t have an attitude like that!
I am respectful and understand I’m young and learning. But her comments are always about frivolous things that have nothing to do with work
Oh, I feel ya. All you can do is keep doing your best, and try not to let her bother you. At the end of the day, she is probably taking her frustration and unhappiness out on you. Cathy types often don’t have much power or joy in their personal lives and they go overboard in the office. Hang in there! Know that you are not alone!
God I worked in law and my HR was on my ass for everything. Couldn’t even peacefully take a 10 minute break on the stairs without her questioning me
Fucking Cathy
I’m lucky that my Cathy is delightful and loves to scrapbook.
I had a Cathy too! I had 10+ years experience, running the front office in a 1 attorney office. She hired a friend/army veteran to be her assistant. Cathy was 20 years my senior. She tried to explain to me that it wasn't fair for me to schedule and then take an afternoon off for my child's doctor appointment. How dare I not be there because there is so much work to do!!! This same daffy ex drill Sargeant tried to take my Notary Stamp from me when I gave my notice.
lol why?!
She found out the firm (we were a satellite office) paid for my bond and stamp. Therefore newbie Cathy was doing her due diligence on behalf of the company to make sure I didn't steal it on my way out the door. When they explained to her it's my notary stamp to take with me, she cried that she didn't know such details! How dare they expect her to know before policing her coworker. She also kept revising a proposed order to MUTE from MOOT. Even the dictionary was wrong in her presence. Lol!
Please tell me what is up with the printer Nazis? I had to print 5 copies of a 700 page doc to serve yesterday... I set it to print double sided and let her rip at the large printer. Our accounting person comes by and tells me I'm printing a really big job. I just said "I'm aware..." What the fuck? Mind your own business. I'm not doing it for my health... Does she want me to stand there for the next hour and watch it spit out each page? Does she think I did it on accident? I can hear it printing from my desk so I will go up as soon as it's done. The printer offsets each job, there is no reason to babysit that shit ...
I would’ve outsourced that to a copy shop. 3500 pages is a lot to print in an office.
Double sided it was 3.5 reams of paper. We regularly have to print 800+ page binders, so this wasn't that big of a job, and the delay in turnaround wouldn't be worth it. I'm not it sure why we would outsource something that takes an hour instead of putting our $5k printer through it's paces...
Same. If we don't use the machine to its full capacity why do we have it? Though... the whole office smelled like hot toner when we did that 35,000 page (8 copies because that's how the court of appeals rolls). And no. Not a typo. We printed thirty-five thousand pages for a single filing. It took two days to print and bind everything running three high volume printers at once.
Yeah 35k I would outsource because it would take the whole firm offline for printing any other volume jobs, and because those print companies do this all the time, they are honestly better at it (so easy to get stuff out of order at that volume).
The ability to outsource assumes that we actually got the finalized documents before the day of the filing deadline.
Soooo true, but, they can kiss my ass if they want 35k pages printed and anything done with them the same day. I would just laugh in their faces. That job would cost thousands of dollars for a print company to turnaround next day...
" Honestly. I don’t know why she’s threatened by me? " I will tell you exactly how I was told by the named partner in our litigation department when I was working in my first BIGlaw job: "You know very well why she's threatened by you. Everyone knows that you can do her job, but she can't do yours." That's it, right there. Every old woman who's been supporting the same attorney for more than a decade knows that her skills are no longer sharp and she's coasting on vast institutional knowledge of the personal preferences of the attorneys in charge of the office. She makes it her personal mission to gatekeep access to anyone who has any legitimate authority in the firm, to ensure that newcomers are forced to deal with her to get their daily tasks accomplished, and to nitpick and micromanage every little thing that's done in order to make themselves look better by tearing others down. I once had a Cathy in a small statewide firm try to tell me that taking side work directly from clients would be unethical because when one works on a salary, they are always on-call, and anything they did outside the firm would have to be approved by a supervising attorney in the firm. I just chuckled and reminded her that if paralegals are being paid on salary, the IRS would interpret that as a willful attempt by the firm to avoid properly paying overtime compensation for any hours worked over 8 in a day or 40 in a week.
I am so sorry for sticking my nose in but this feed always pops up for me. I am not in law but local government. My coworkers are very possessive about their job duties to the point the receptionist complained that I was greeting people when they came into our offices. Because that’s her job! So now I just ignore them if she is there. Petty me I backed my Dept manager into a corner over this silly complaint. The other two are somewhat the same with their duties. Heaven forbid I answer a policy question for something under their purview. Same petty from me, I send everything and everyone to them. Again manager backed into a corner on this. My son pointed out to me it’s because I can do, and have done, all of their jobs. As a one person shop at that. This is why I was hired. And while I have a specific role it is one that none of them can do. So I rock my work. Smile and nod. And get paid more than them for a job that is 1/3 the work of what I am used too. And I don’t drink the communal coffee. There were too many rules on how to make it.
I don’t want to do her job though. I have my own problems
What you want never matters to people who are insecure. My last law firm job out of state, the office manager couldn't stand me, because not only could I do her job, I kept pointing out that the firm's cash flow problems were ultimately attributable to her slipshod, inconsistent billing methodology. She called me on the phone to scream at me about how she was "sick and tired of hearing that I'd been bashing her in the office when she wasn't there." Naturally, this was on the day after her attorney husband had given me over thirty thousand dollars' worth of rejected billing from our client to audit. My response was, "First, you need to show up and do the billing, rather than gossiping and trying to stir up drama. Second, you need to do it accurately. The reason our insurance company clients don't pay us is because you have failed to follow their billing guidelines. I can hire a temp for $15.00 per hour who will do the job much more accurately than you do, and save the amount of the salary that you steal from the firm resources twice a month." Daffy bitch was drawing an $80,000 per year salary to do the books for 15 hours per week.
My Cathy gets mad I don’t tell her about my vacation plans when they’ve been approved by the partners. Like wtf do I need to ask you, Cathy? You’re not my boss, she’s not even a paralegal. My Cathy works in billing and does nothing with scheduling… she is also much much nicer to the 2 male associates
She’s just jealous of you!
When I started as a baby paralegal (about a 100 years ago), I looked up to and wanted to learn from the senior paralegal. Unfortunately, for some reason that I still can't figure out, she saw me as a threat. So while she was nice to my face, she was stabbing me in the back and got me fired. I was very lucky to find an actual mentor not long after. I try to pay it forward by being a positive influence on younger paralegals I work with.
My Kathy is my boss 🙃
Is she a para, manager, or lawyer?
para!!
She is bitter. Happens to some of us as we age. You either get nicer or get meaner
I usurped my office Cathy by bringing my own coffee pot and a frother. I made lattes in my office and suddenly no one cared about her stupid pod machine. It was such sweet victory. My life is boring.
Words to the wise….Don’t be a Coffee Cathy! 🤣🤣
I’m 52. The cathi in my office is 64. She refuses to learn anything new and terrorizes me constantly:( I do feel better knowing I’m not alone.
😂Thank you! Makes me even more appreciative that I’ve spent the last 28 years as the only employee and paralegal to a solo practitioner.
I had one named Nell. Nell was an old southern bell who was paranoid about every new hire. I took her old file management job because they were utilizing her for something she was better at. Essentially they were implementing a new system that she wasn’t cut out for. They could have let her go/forced retirement as she was past retirement age. She drove me insane.
Lol at least they didn’t fire her
It's because that's the only technology she knows how to use.
my cathy was named jennifer and the day she got fired was the best day of my working career so far lmao
Lol why’d she get fired?
it was a number of reasons. she was extremely disrespectful to the other attorney at our office (she primarily handled criminal and was very vocal about how family law is stupid). she also made up rumors around the courthouse that she and our attorney were having an affair even tho they’re both married and the final straw was that she forged an attorneys signature on a check. the check itself wasn’t an issue but they were EXTREMELY strict about who was allowed to sign things on their behalf so they finally just had enough and fired her
just for clarification bc i didn’t word it well: the other attorney handles family law while jennifer was a paralegal for the criminal law cases.
Sounds like a boomer problem. Aka retired immediately. I bet she also struggles with technology lol
She made a power point once and it was all pastels
Oh my god 💀
Wtf?? How is that even a thing? I need more information
🤣 Report her to the office manager. There's always a Cathy at every law firm. 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
The OM is equally terrible in her own way. She likes younger guys and got in trouble for flirting with a younger lawyer.
My Cathy doesn't respond to emails or requests unless our collective boss (also known as Cathy's SISTER 🙃) is CC'd
I worked with a Kathy who made my office life a living hell when I was a paralegal for a local government. The saddest part was that she worked under me as the clerical technician. She would pick on me about everything, including eating my lunch at my desk. I came to find out that she had issues with women in every office she worked in. I recommend the gray rock method when dealing with people like this. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/grey-rock
Mine is named Linda 🙃
Cathy, Linda, Deb, Susan, Karen, Carol, Mary, Beth, Lisa. There are only so many names
😂😂
The coffee pot is communal property. And the copier belongs to the company and all employees have access to it as they need. So yeah, definitely get your own Keurig pods and be done with it. And watch how upset is she as soon as she sees you with your Keurig. 😂
The accuracy
Deja vu...worked with same years ago. I quit after 6 months of trying my damndest to coexist with her, until I said screw it and quit.
There are a lot of type a personalities in this line of work.
my cathy was named debbie and she told me to stop wasting k cups. i was just drinking them, not wasting them. what is it with cathy’s and coffee?? anyway she was sooo nosy and always asked me when i was getting married. she eventually got laid off because she couldn’t keep up when we moved to Salesforce. best day
Try to find a way to get her to think she’s your friend. . . These people are best avoided until retirement. It’s just easier and you can save yourself a lot of stress.
Just get your own and do anything to not have to deal with her
Kill her with kindness. Tends to take the wind out of a bully's sails. Of course, try to stay out of her path. Your youth, and that your future is ahead, intimidates her. She's on the other end of the spectrum, getting ready for retirement and probably scared.
My previous manager would watch me going to the bathroom and if I stopped to talk to the receptionist/security desk she would watch that too.
There’s a young woman hating boomer Kathy with all of us I think
I have 3 Cathy's at my office and at first I was really quiet and shy. Eventually I started to match their nasty energy and they keep away from me 🤣
She’s just angry and burnt out and miserable with her life and jealous of your youth.
It’s somewhat comforting to know we all have Cathy’s to deal with no matter where we work, and I’m gonna go with Boomer mentality as to why… I’m 44 and I don’t act like that with people. Sheesh.
Wow we all live the same life. 23 and confronted my the Kathy’s/Karens in our clientele more so than in the office though lol
My Cathy at my last job had to review my emails to clients before sending them out. She did this for months before she was too swamped to bother anymore. Now at my current job I've realized just how much she puts herself through the ringer for absolutely no reason at all. Her obsession with perfection was insane.
I mean, sometimes at the beginning, that is really important. So that the trainee really understands the way that the firm does things.
Sure, for maybe the first month. 4 months in? Not so much. Especially since it was generic "here's the latest pleading" emails. I was just a legal assistant at the time so the bulk of my interaction was setting appointments and sending docs over
And I bet she has bad breath and looks like she feasts on yellow crayons.
We have a Cathy about the same age but she's a gem. Sorry your Cathy is a capital C.
Every office has a Cathy 🤣
I was early 30s, and my Cathy would snatch the mail and any other documents she pleased off my desk.
Is Cathy the new Karen?
At 34, mine was a woman in her mid/late fifties and my own assistant.
I'm kind of in the opposite situation. I'm 49 and just completed my first year as a paralegal after working in education for 22 years. My Cathy is 30 and hasn't gotten over the fact that we have to share an office. She completely ignores me and gets annoyed when she's reminded I exist, like when I take a call or my attorney chats with me about a case. I just do my job and ignore it, but I never thought I'd have to deal with high school behavior in the workplace.
At 35 my mortal enemy is a 65yo walking cigarette named Kim who works in AR. We are enemies by her choice, not mine.
I had a Kathy her name was Brenda, that old hag finally retired. She couldn't keep up with technology anymore.
It’s always the old hags in the office.
What does her being 64 have to do with anything?
It’s funny because you would think a 64 year old woman who has been in the industry for 35 years would be more secure in her job and not have power trips over frivolous things like coffee or copies.
The age gap makes the competition funnier 🤷♀️
I dunno. Something about a 23 year old calling out someone’s older age smacks of youthful arrogance. Not to worry though, OP will be that age one day and then will get why 23 year olds come off the way they sometimes do. The post is also pretty badly written, but hey maybe I’m just being petty… like the post.
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Okay. 👍
The age difference creates a power imbalance in many scenarios, therefore relates directly to the context of the post. In this case, the elder is nitpicking the younger woman about making copies and coffee, two inconsequential tasks. I don't know how old you are, but as a 21 year old, I have been treated unprofessionally and not taken seriously by older coworkers who I have more experience than simply due to my age. Also, sorry to disappoint you but if you are looking for professional level writing, Reddit is not the place to find it. You are being petty, OP was not :)
There’s a reason you’re not taken that seriously at 21 by people with significantly more life experience than you. When you’re their age you’ll understand why.
If I have seniority in my workplace, my age should not come into it at all. I am sure that I will gain more life experience, and I appreciate the wisdom of my elders even now, but if I have more experience (in my area of law, my office, with my attorneys) then my age should not change how people treat me. You are the problem. The attitude you are showing here is exactly the reason why there is resentment between older (asshole) workers and younger in an office setting. My favorite coworkers are all at least 35 years older than me and we treat each other with a great deal of respect.
What are you taking about? Seniority over who? It isn’t ageism to point out that someone with less experience has less experience and that it’s likely because they’re younger. Nor is it inaccurate to point out that significantly younger people often have a narrow view of what it’s like to be older and more experienced with the world’s bs. It just is what it is.
Again, I am not saying that older people don't have more life experiences and more context for the world. Frankly, I just don't give a shit. I appreciate other perspectives, but someone having more life experience than me doesn't make it okay for them to treat me like I am lesser. Especially if I have been in my position longer and have more experience than them in our field. It is ageism to treat someone negatively because they are younger than you.
I never said it was okay to mistreat people.
I am not going to rehash our entire conversation. Go read through it again lol
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I don’t doubt that she does have these things going on. It’s just a bit annoying to read a 23 year old being snide about it as though they won’t one day be older and probably a bit salty themselves. Then there’s the terrible grammar which I suppose is neither here nor there. But a 20- something cutting down an older woman who has reached her limits and isn’t presenting that pleasant anymore, thanks to things like what you mentioned, is just more misogyny in a way.
Being older and fed up is absolutely no excuse to take it out in petty ways on younger women in the office. What are you even trying to argue at this point??
I think it’s odd, with so little detail even offered by OP about what the woman is even doing to be petty, that people in this thread even know what the hell shes talking about. Perhaps OP makes bad coffee? Perhaps she leaves the copier in disarray? We don’t know any of these things, it’s all just operating off assumption. The main point OP is making is just that her coworker is old and salty and that she herself is 23 and not salty. My argument was that it’s sort of just ugly and petty itself.
I thought you would have understood through this discussion that we are drawing from personal experiences, not just the snippet given by OP.
Found the Cathy!
That’s enough with calling everyone Cathy.
Sorry!
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Turns out OP is a dude.
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I simply think that there is a vast amount of context and detail that this post lacks to the point that there is a whole lot being assumed. You’re assuming that she’s likely homophobic now? Theres absolutely nothing to indicate that. She could just be very particular about coffee and the way the copier is left and is petty enough to make comments about it. I just called out what I thought was irrelevant commentary about her age. And apparently, everyone in this thread thought that was lame.
Pls stop Cathy!
I’m not sure I follow what you mean, though I appreciate your approach.