When I was just starting out as a legal secretary, I worked for two lawyers who I referred to as Good Boss and Evil Boss. Evil Boss would be amazingly nice and chatty, then later in the day be nasty and cold. He would never look for a file - he would yell for me to immediately find a particular FILE - which would be on his desk where he kept all of his working files. He once misplaced a document, and made me go through EVERY FILE IN THE OFFICE looking for it. I finally did find it on top of a tall cabinet, where I couldn't reach due to my lack of height. He never admitted he left it there.

In addition he would go through my in-box after I had left the office and rearrange the stack, move his work up and add new post-it notes with different deadline dates. It took me a while to figure this out - and it made me doubt myself about my ability to prioritize. He would also go through the other lawyers' offices after they had left, and then mirror a "meeting" on his timesheet to coincide with some work they had done, thus falsifying the billing. (He was the only lawyer I worked for who falsified billing, and I have worked for quite a few.) Three drafts to any document was the absolute minimum, and he often wanted to see the previous drafts for him to check my work. Consequently, my wastepaper basket was very organized.

The best part? He had formerly been a priest!!!!! And he was the biggest liar and manipulator I have ever come across. Luckily for me, Good Boss was as good as Evil Boss was evil, so it sort of balanced out.

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