Sojourn to a strange jungle
Jun. 10th, 2002 09:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gurdonarkSince our office move a few weeks back, we've had a lot more space to work in. We moved from the charming drop-lamps-and-high-ceilings-but-we-long-ago-outgrew-the-space "hep" offices (next to the coffeeshop with the free folk singers, down the street from the rustic town square) to larger, more "office parkish" we-are-functional-now space.
Our offices were previously occupied by a real estate company, which used series of HUGE french doors between office spaces to allow on-the-spot reconfiguration of the space for "big conference room" or "small little office" arrays, in a bewildering array of permutations. We converted that space into rather traditional offices. For my office, though, I had the finish out done to leave a huge french door in the middle of the space. I have a huge "partner's desk" which is many decades old, and was my late grandfather's desk during his years as an agent for a railroad crosstie company. This desk, with my chair and the "computer credenza" takes up essentially half the office. The "other" half of the office can thus be walled off with the french doors. This allows me to set up meetings in the "right" half of the office while hiding away the very "people working with too many papers" look of my desk.
The problem is that the two charming client chairs,
snazzy metallic numbers with nice leather seats and backs, look abandoned in the new office. When the french doors are shut, it's like some spouse has moved out of the right half of the office, and taken all the appliances and the good furniture with him/her, service of divorce papers imminent. Even with my framed postage stamps and the various wall things I am in the process of assembling, the place has that "save me, I'm all alone" look in the "client" half that is not the comforting tone I am seeking.
So I headed to an establishment we'll call the Large Old Fashioned Furniture Store (LOFFS) to meet with the person who helped me get my original chairs, whom we'll call (by her name) Mimi. Mimi is a really friendly person with a "good eye". I have a reasonably "good eye" when it comes to matters of furniture, but one wants a sounding board with a "really good eye", and Mimi fits the bill.
Now shopping for furniture is always a challenge.
One can go to a place like Office QuarterPounder,
and get really cool stuff that assembles with a swiss army knife. One can go to a High Toned Furniture Mansion, and pay roughly the price of a lambourghini, but get none of the acceleration. I chose instead to go to LOFFS, where the pricing is not bottom dollar nor top dollar.
Now my initial idea was simple. I have two chairs.
I could buy four more chairs and a table. I would be "set". But life is not that simple. Although my current office chairs were not inexpensive, though on sale, the cost of such chairs has now accelerated by a multiple to the per capita income of several third world citizens per chair. There's something silly about that notion. It's a chair, not a precious metal. But in two years, two years in which the markets have all gone to heck,
this chair format was now twice as expensive. Furniture stores are a strange jungle, where the rules of economics and math don't apply.
Mimi had some really cool stuff picked out for me.
This stuff was again in a moderne scheme. It was dear, but not so expensive as to take away the breath But I still wanted to explore a bit more.
I wanted something friendly, something that would make clients feel comfortable. To me, the problem with lawyers is that they are human in all the ways one does not want them to be human, and inhuman in all the situations when a little common humanity is in order.
I wanted to break the mold.
I made my way over to a circular table with good old fashioned solid oak chairs; you know, those chairs with the spokes on the back in an oval-ish kinda shape, that just scream "solid, friendly, and boring in the right way, but a really quirky, fun time". Nothing Jetsons-ish or outre here. Think Waltons, if the Waltons had had an attorney.
Mimi caught the idea at once. But then came the moment in which Mimi earned her commission. "I know this is much less expensive", I said,
"but is it okay? Will the furniture last? Will it be all right?".
Suddenly, in a moment, Mimi "got it". She did not have before her the "sell me your best" type of power lawyer. She was dealing with a customer who wanted simple, old-fashioned, at a reasonable price, but did not want to embarrass himself.
"This is one of our *oldest* and most popular lines,"
she quietly and sincerely said, "it will be okay".
I live for moments when people will stop *trying* to sell me things and just tell me what I need to know.
Sometimes it's not the words I need, nor even the reassurance. It's just the little flash--that "i understand you now".
I asked if we could go put the ordinary brown oak table with the friendly little chairs on my credit card. Tuesday of next week, delivery people will make me a Walton. Mimi, by contrast, no doubt would be on Animal Planet, having tranquilized another elusive exotic in the strange jungle.
Our offices were previously occupied by a real estate company, which used series of HUGE french doors between office spaces to allow on-the-spot reconfiguration of the space for "big conference room" or "small little office" arrays, in a bewildering array of permutations. We converted that space into rather traditional offices. For my office, though, I had the finish out done to leave a huge french door in the middle of the space. I have a huge "partner's desk" which is many decades old, and was my late grandfather's desk during his years as an agent for a railroad crosstie company. This desk, with my chair and the "computer credenza" takes up essentially half the office. The "other" half of the office can thus be walled off with the french doors. This allows me to set up meetings in the "right" half of the office while hiding away the very "people working with too many papers" look of my desk.
The problem is that the two charming client chairs,
snazzy metallic numbers with nice leather seats and backs, look abandoned in the new office. When the french doors are shut, it's like some spouse has moved out of the right half of the office, and taken all the appliances and the good furniture with him/her, service of divorce papers imminent. Even with my framed postage stamps and the various wall things I am in the process of assembling, the place has that "save me, I'm all alone" look in the "client" half that is not the comforting tone I am seeking.
So I headed to an establishment we'll call the Large Old Fashioned Furniture Store (LOFFS) to meet with the person who helped me get my original chairs, whom we'll call (by her name) Mimi. Mimi is a really friendly person with a "good eye". I have a reasonably "good eye" when it comes to matters of furniture, but one wants a sounding board with a "really good eye", and Mimi fits the bill.
Now shopping for furniture is always a challenge.
One can go to a place like Office QuarterPounder,
and get really cool stuff that assembles with a swiss army knife. One can go to a High Toned Furniture Mansion, and pay roughly the price of a lambourghini, but get none of the acceleration. I chose instead to go to LOFFS, where the pricing is not bottom dollar nor top dollar.
Now my initial idea was simple. I have two chairs.
I could buy four more chairs and a table. I would be "set". But life is not that simple. Although my current office chairs were not inexpensive, though on sale, the cost of such chairs has now accelerated by a multiple to the per capita income of several third world citizens per chair. There's something silly about that notion. It's a chair, not a precious metal. But in two years, two years in which the markets have all gone to heck,
this chair format was now twice as expensive. Furniture stores are a strange jungle, where the rules of economics and math don't apply.
Mimi had some really cool stuff picked out for me.
This stuff was again in a moderne scheme. It was dear, but not so expensive as to take away the breath But I still wanted to explore a bit more.
I wanted something friendly, something that would make clients feel comfortable. To me, the problem with lawyers is that they are human in all the ways one does not want them to be human, and inhuman in all the situations when a little common humanity is in order.
I wanted to break the mold.
I made my way over to a circular table with good old fashioned solid oak chairs; you know, those chairs with the spokes on the back in an oval-ish kinda shape, that just scream "solid, friendly, and boring in the right way, but a really quirky, fun time". Nothing Jetsons-ish or outre here. Think Waltons, if the Waltons had had an attorney.
Mimi caught the idea at once. But then came the moment in which Mimi earned her commission. "I know this is much less expensive", I said,
"but is it okay? Will the furniture last? Will it be all right?".
Suddenly, in a moment, Mimi "got it". She did not have before her the "sell me your best" type of power lawyer. She was dealing with a customer who wanted simple, old-fashioned, at a reasonable price, but did not want to embarrass himself.
"This is one of our *oldest* and most popular lines,"
she quietly and sincerely said, "it will be okay".
I live for moments when people will stop *trying* to sell me things and just tell me what I need to know.
Sometimes it's not the words I need, nor even the reassurance. It's just the little flash--that "i understand you now".
I asked if we could go put the ordinary brown oak table with the friendly little chairs on my credit card. Tuesday of next week, delivery people will make me a Walton. Mimi, by contrast, no doubt would be on Animal Planet, having tranquilized another elusive exotic in the strange jungle.
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no subject
Date: 2002-06-10 09:06 pm (UTC)a good remiinder
legal clinic in town every month. I enjoyed it,
but in the long run I'll have to do a bit more.
Larger offices theoretically give me the room for more more pro bono work, and it's good that you point that out.
back from the mysts
Date: 2002-06-11 09:14 am (UTC)what a great business roll model you are.
i have a grand old oak chair originally from the Radio Material School at Treasure Island Military Base, Inventory #60. it is not on wheels and i chuckle when people come in my small studio space and go to pull it up to something and it barely moves, it's much heavier than one would think.
i love the walton's. have watched all the episodes in syndication as i did not watch much tv when it originally came out.
favorite episodes or eras? when mary ellen finds the ailing young man who dies and decides she will be a doctor no matter what. the baldwin sisters and any episode about the "recipe". will ponder this as i work today....catching up....
Re: back from the mysts
Your chair sounds really cool. I love older pieces.
I wish I were more the type of person to keep my eye out for them, hoard them away, and then have them when needed. This would be much less expensive, and much more charming. But I'm never good at acquiring stuff and setting it aside for "someday".
My favorite Waltons episode is when the refugees from the Nazis come to the neighborhood, and yet encounter less than unprejudiced treatment from a few locals. That one really "gets" to me.
But there are so many great episodes of that show.
I was just thinking the other day that I want to re read Hamner's Homecoming story. Last year I read
another of those books.
Re: back from the mysts
Date: 2002-06-11 10:08 am (UTC)i have moved so much that there are not many things worth moving again and this is still one
i love that episode, too. i think i enjoyed the stories so much because it was good writing depicting human experiences
i like the one, too, where mr. walton hides or gives a head start to his friend who was being held guilty before proven innocent adn stands up to his friend the sheriff to do so knowing he's breaking the law
and the one about the horse race
and teacher with the brain tumor
she rambles......
Re: back from the mysts
Date: 2002-06-11 10:36 am (UTC)Re: back from the mysts
Date: 2002-06-11 10:50 am (UTC)