r/work • u/PrettyPresent5961 • 1h ago
Workplace Challenges and Conflicts This may be more of just ranting than getting my point across
First time posting, idk if it is even worth a thought but wanted to test the waters.
I've been at my current job for 6 months. A friend reached out and asked if I'd be interested and I was offered the job right after the interview.
I was told I'd be working for one attorney and offering some assistance to the other- no big deal for me. It's a great law firm with a great group of tight knit paralegals. Or so I thought.
I knew something was off on my first day. I was working directly with "HR" aka the head attorneys wife. We didn't take a break the entire day and at 3 she offered to let me leave at 4 because of it. There were a few other circumstances that made me toss some flags but that's only a tiny part of the situation.
Shortly after taking this position I learned that this role had been vacant for practically 5 months and the two that had been filling in for it weren't really up to par. One employee just had it added to their existing role and was trying their best to juggle both roles. The other just wasn't doing things they said they were.
So here is where most of my dilemma comes in to play. I started this position 5 months behind and lucky for me, it never slowed down. So I've been trying to catch up and also keep things going smoothly with new clients.
And for the icing on the cake, there is one employee who is "in charge" but not in charge and she is rude and has an old school 'that's just the way I am' mentality that is infuriating. She brags on being molded by previous bosses who were post military but the way she uses the knowledge isn't something to be proud of. I am younger than her child and she uses the sentence "I'm old enough to be your mother" way too often. She has extreme beef with previously mentioned HR lady but everyone else is okay with it because "that's just the way she is" but she throws me under the bus any chance she gets.
I feel like I'm a target for her because I'm younger than she is and it's driving me nuts to even have to think like this. She always has days where she is extremely nice and brings toys to me to give my girls.
Some small bullet points that I don't want to fully go into detail on:
-she has a lot going on in her personal life so I try to give her the benefit of the doubt but some days its just infuriating
-no one told me she was my boss or that I have to report to her
-another coworker mentioned she said I was "too cocky" before I even started and others have mentioned they don't think its right the way she talks to me sometimes
-not all days are nightmares, just usually the days that neither of the attorneys are in office
-I don't feel like I get compensated enough for all the tasks that I am in charge of or that have been reassigned to me after starting (i.e. they fired an entire company that used to do the major part of the work because it was too expensive so now that is my responsibility.)
-there have been money issues mentioned (disconnect notices and a panic of potentially not meeting payroll once) so I don't think there is any hope for a raise in my future.
If you've stayed this long, you may be wondering what is the point of my rambling and I am getting to that now.
Unprompted I had a new friend ask me about my job and what I did. I wanted to keep it short but she mentioned that her job (large hospital) was looking for a new paralegal if I'd be interested. In that short moment, I decided I'd be honest and told her about the money talks that had come about and how it felt like I wasn't so sure this was the place for me.
I don't technically have one of the requirements per the hospital but my friend's boss is willing to look at having the job ran through the HR department and rewritten for me to qualify if I'm interested. Which I am pretty interested in.
The part that has me going back and forth is that one of our attorneys has a true heart of gold. He will go out of his way to help any one who needs it. He truly just wants to help make sure people are taken care of. The other attorney though, gives me vibes that he only sees clients as dollar signs.
TLDR- I feel like I'd be hurting the one attorney because we are still pretty far behind but I am doing the best I can but it doesn't feel like it will ever be good enough.
Should I feel guilty about possibly jumping ship and leaving them stuck in the mess that I started in or should I just stay and stick it out until the backlog is gone?