My judge has been on vacation for the past week and just returned today. Meanwhile, work has been killing me; I’d been assigned to a criminal calendar court with no permanent staffing so nobody really knows what’s going on, and the temp judge assigned there was on vacation the first 2 days of my assignment there, so the cases were called in another department, one day along with 3 other courtrooms’ cases. Waiting around for your cases to finish among 3 other courts’ caseloads was a slow agonizing process and I didn’t have time to get all the work in by the day’s end. I caught up in day 2 and stayed caught up in the subsequent days, but it involved coming in 1.5 hours earlier than other coworkers and working through lunch daily with no breaks. I’m glad my judge is back. I used to pride myself on being a very good criminal calendar clerk, but the law’s changed quite a bit since I’ve done it regularly and the computer systems have evolved to accommodate (poorly) the changes. Add to that, with the recent extreme budget cuts to the county and state, we’re all getting more work than we used to, absorbing the caseloads of entire courthouses that have shut down around us. In all the crazy turmoil of the past week, however, I’m reminded of what great coworkers I have. People have been great in stepping in and helping me, giving me quick tutorials on things I didn’t know how to do, clearing out the overflowing mailbin here, bringing up case files for me there. I told one extra helpful clerk, “I owe you big.”
He said, “You don’t owe me nuthin’.”
I said, “I’ll come up with something worthy of all your help the past few days.” And then later, a brainstorm. “Hey, I know what I can give you as thanks! You can have my firstborn chil –”
“No, I already have two of my own,” he cut me off. Well, he can’t say I didn’t offer. =P

There’s a good Samaritan that’s been bringing up my mail and files for my regular courtroom, but I don’t know who that is. All I know is that my regular court’s mailbin was filled to the brim but I didn’t have time to do anything about it, and one day when I had a minute or two, I went to the mail section and my bin was empty. Coming to my courtroom, I saw that things had already been distributed. I don’t even know who to thank.

Impending layoffs are looming ahead, and with them, involuntary transfers from those of us left to other buildings in the County. I hope we don’t lose the good people. 🙁