Oh dear.

People don't know what they don't know, of course, but once in a while my social worker positive regard slips a little and I have a "what are you THINKING?" moment.

 I wish I could quote the letter a client's mother wrote for him because, well, I read it in little bursts, unable to process entirely how wrong it is. It was at once somewhat funny and very disappointing since I really, truly can't use it, and in fact it's so off track for what you'd want to write to a judge to say good things about your kid that I don't know if I can even really call and say "could you leave in X and take out the rest?" because all of it I've read so far is unusable.

 I have a sheet of suggestions I send people home with sometimes, and I think one thing I'm going to add to it is: don't use big words, and try to write mostly in short sentences. I don't know how else to say it without coming off as a horrible snob. Of course what I mean is "don't be fancy unless you're very sure of what you're doing or you're just going to sound like a dope."

 Ok, I read the rest of it. Some of it is fine and most of it is not. And it lists a CC to the Assistant District Attorney which I hope is just another affectation and she didn't actually send it because augh.

Oh hi

I guess I abandoned this altogether. I'm back, maybe, because I'm thinking about some job transitions and also a mad burnout case and may need space to "ventilate affect" if that term can be expanded to include screaming and setting things on fire. Exasperation du jour: The fact that my job puts me in the position of being brittle and officious to wage slaves in records rooms is taking some years off my life. I just said "it's a little bit troubling to me" in the smarmy tone you would expect for those words to someone who was being perfectly pleasant because it appears for the millionth time my release for information to help with someone's court case, a thing that has a specific date, has fallen into the void. I would hate to work in a records room. It sounds like a nightmare, like that David Foster Wallace story in the New Yorker where he works for the IRS, checking people's tax forms. I didn't make it through that and I wouldn't make it through a month working in a records room but this does not really help me when I'm on the other end of the equation, sending releases, calling repeatedly, having people do the telephonic equivalent of staring at me helplessly and blinking, and then I have to go back to an attorney and say "I don't have the records yet." This should be simple. This should be the mindless part of the job. Instead it is the ruinous part. Today I'm calling a different records room and offering to go up there physically and pick up the records because they simply don't seem to care at all. My fax cover sheets have gotten more and more huffy. Did I really just say that? Is that what my job has turned me into. My fax cover sheets have gotten more and more huffy. Does anyone have a match?