I walked off the elevator this morning toward my courtroom and bumped into my supervisor. “Well HELLO!” he said in mock sarcastic joy. “ConGRATULATIONS! You have a trainee.” I walked in and so I did. =P

I set up all my stuff, and then turned to her (who was seated too far away, really) whether she knew anything about jury trials. She said, “A little bit.” So I told her we’ll just start with her taking notes in our trial today and we’ll compare notes at the end of the day so I can see if she’s noting the right things and picking up on the important things in trial that will need to go into her minute orders. She agreed, but just sat there. “Do you have a notepad?” I asked her. “Not today,” she said. Who doesn’t bring a notepad to an on-the-job training? But I got a notepad and had to walk it over to her as she seemed content to just sit there and let me keep getting up and handing her stuff or to talk to her.

A few minutes later, I got up and walked to her again (as court was in full session and I had to whisper) and asked her whether she knew her oaths. I know from my training classes that I had to memorize all my different oaths and recite them on command from the instructors. She said, “I don’t have my oath cards on me today.” She was dependent on note cards for her oaths? We were told that you needed to know them when you hit a courtroom. They stressed this over and over, that they’d fail you immediately if you didn’t have your oaths down. And who goes to on-the-job training without their oaths on-hand? So I asked her whether she had memorized her oaths in classroom training. She got defensive and said, “YES I learned my oaths in class and I PASSED my oaths but on a daily basis I am not required to HAVE my oaths — ” She was wrong, but I cut her off and hissed in a loud whisper, “You don’t have to get defensive on me. I’m just trying to see if you know your oaths because if you do I’m going to have you swear in the witnesses in our trial today. I’m not accusing you of anything, I’m not trying to make you defensive, I’m just trying to see what you know from class because I don’t know whether they’ve changed the class.” Jeebus! She backed off and said, “No, that’s fine, they didn’t change the class. I can swear in the witnesses.” I was TICKED.

She did chill after that and at breaks and during sidebars, I was able to bring her copies of forms to explain them to her, bring her the trial file and go over it with her, basically I had to bring everything to her, kneel by her on the ground and point things out. She never moved her fat ass out of the chair. But I’d rather do that than to have her breathing down my throat in my desk area, so I didn’t tell her to move closer. She told me she had a doctor’s appointment she’d leave for at 11:45a, and I said that’s fine. And then it started looking like a new witness was going to come in before lunch. I told her she can swear in that witness, and she cut me off with, “Well actually, I was gonna tell you that I’m going to leave at 11:30 instead. And they’re going to finish up with this witness first before the new witness.” Fine. Whatever. She was still sitting there at 11:26ish when our witness concluded early and the new witness was walking in. I turned to her and told her she can swear in this witness before she had to leave, and she stood and said, “I’m just going to leave now,” and left.

And then later another clerk emailed me to tell me the trainee told her I was rude to her and told her to just take notes all day.

Is she AWARE that I am going to write her training evaluation?!