I think I’ve referred to this lawyer friend of mine in past posts; an incident today with him prompted this post.
By way of background, this fellow, in his late 50s, is clearly an alcoholic in heavy denial. He’s all but completely ruined his once brilliant career through booze and the apparent inability to maintain a zipped fly.
Has he lost everything yet. No, he owns a lovely home, albeit three months behind on the mortgage and family interests in three houses in a major metropolitan area.
Yesterday he called me asked for some help with email problems, virtually all the fault of his hosting service. I suggested he switch providers and I’d walk him through it; you know, repointing the domains and setting up the email on the hosting service.
“I don’t understand computers,” he protested loudly over the phone as I pointed out to him that it’s not a matter of “understanding” them, it’s a matter of typing in what I tell you. “In fact,” I said, “it’s automatic from the hosting provider.” Just email me a list of the email address and passwords and I’ll take care of it.
By this time I had spent at least three hours on this project, enduring his bombastic attitude and divergence into other subjects, as well as the constant protestations about his lack of computer capability.
He called about a half hour ago and said, “I have the email address, take them down.” I responded “Just email them to me.” “I don’t type,” he said. My response was, “I’m not your secretary and if you’re able to send an email you type every day. Either send them to me or handle the rest of the project yourself.”
Now, I’ve got time to blog, but that’s my time; time I choose not to write or effect billable work for clients, but I’ve not the time to be a secretary.
It’s hard to believe this fellow has such a sense of entitlement, notwithstanding an all but devastated reputation as an attorney and few friends left in the world, one of them, me, disengaging today.
