Time Recording - AWK.AWK.03

This is the third instalment of our popular time recording How-To series:  Awkward Encounters. You've just completed your first seat, and for the last month have been adulting like a real lawyer. Conversations at drinks with trainee friends focus less and less on the embarrassing moments of the past week, and you are able to move onto other topics.

But you move to your next group. You've passed Stage 1 (Excitement) and have potentially progressed onto Stage 2 (Overwhelmed) (see earlier post). Suddenly, you're finding the need to pull out that old AWK.AWK timer, which you thought you'd left behind. This post aims to provide some further examples with which to help you decide if your second seat encounters are awkward enough to constitute recordable time.

Slips of the tongue

You're Australian and are used to saying "Your Honour" when faced with Court scenarios. You attend an advocacy course where you learn that when addressing a High Court judge in the UK, you must use "My Lord/My Lady" or "Your Lordship/ Your Ladyship". Your brain somehow chooses to go with "Your Honship". The minutes of embarrassed silence following, not once, but every time you accidentally say "Your Honship" is accountable time.

Getting a little too comfortable

You've been successfully navigating the banter at work, making light jokes and having a laugh. You're feeling pretty confident. You walk into an associate's office and strike up a conversation. He mentions that he's feeling a bit overheated and asks if you feel it too. You reply "the whole office is hot, you're not just radiating heat due to your good looks". The long, suffering silence that follows is all recordable under AWK.AWK.03.

The Blank

A female Senior Associate in the group, who you think is an absolute boss, comes into your office to talk to your supervisor. To your surprise and delight, she compliments the salad you're eating and asks you what's in it. She has never spoken to you before, and in your internal excitement you temporarily lose the ability to recall vegetable names. You stare forward for 15-20 seconds in complete silence, only realising later that your Resting Bitch Face was on full strength as you tried desperately to remember the word for "grated carrot". 

The 15-20 seconds of blank stare, plus the minutes of agony that follow after the Senior Associate smiles awkwardly and turns to your supervisor before you can get out a single word, are all recordable under this time code. 

What's said in the office, stays in the office

You and your supervisor get along great. As an Australian, you inevitably get into a debate about the word "thong". A debate ensues where you allege that if you search Google for "thongs", pictures of flip flops will come up. He thinks you're wrong, asserting that pictures of G-strings will be the only result. So you put it to the test, searching for "thongs" on Google images. Of course it's at this moment that a Partner walks into your office, staring horrified at your computer screen which shows, mostly, bottoms of all shapes and sizes. She recovers, and speaks to your supervisor without mentioning anything. You quickly close the screen. 

She leaves, and you say to your supervisor that the result will be different if you search google.com.au. So you type in that search and bring up another array of bottoms and cracks, with a couple of flip flops. The Partner, forgetting something, walks back into the room. If your supervisor and the Partner look like this, then it's all accountable:

Out of arms' way

You've had a rough week and have just moved into your new seat....literally, you're sitting in your new seat and trying to adapt it to your new desk. You try to adjust the armrest but it won't move. You tug at it gently, but it still won't budge. You try to pull it harder, and suddenly the arm flings off the chair and flies across the room. Your brand new supervisor, of course, chooses that moment to walk in and sees the arm of your chair lying on the floor. He asks if everything's ok, you want to say:

What's in a name?

You go to ask an associate a question over email, but accidentally send the email to a client instead. You feel mildly embarrassed - this in itself will not be recordable under the AWK.AWK code. On the other hand, the client receives your email with good humour and tells you a story. When they were an associate, they wanted to ask their PA to do some printing ahead of a meeting, but sent the email to the Financial Director of a FTSE 100 company who happened to have the same name. Safe to say the FD apparently did not bring the print outs to the meeting. This would be recordable under AWK.AWK.03.

Inappropriate hugging

This example seems so obvious it need not be stated, but unfortunately, mistakes do happen. You've been in your new seat for three weeks now and find the group to be lovely. This gives you a false sense of security. One day, you find yourself creeping towards 6pm with 3 tasks all due that night. Your team are also urging you to go to the team drinks. You go to the drinks, intending to only go for an hour and then head back to your desk, but instead you get tipsy off one glass of wine - this regularly happens at law firm drinks where dinner consists of a handful of crisps. An associate in your group very kindly speaks to the Partner for you and gets the deadline moved to Monday, clearing you to stay at the drinks. You are overjoyed, wrap your arms around her and give her a hug. 

Do not hug your colleagues. They are your colleagues. 

While you were too tipsy to notice the awkwardness at the time, you may retrospectively record such time once awkwardness is realised.