Wednesday, June 18, 2003

Voice mail message I received after lunch (or the gist of it anyway):

Hi, I’m Joan Public Defender and we need for you to book a room for one of our witnesses that’s flying in today. Or you can give me the billing number to give the hotel and I can book the room. But this needs to be done ASAP.

Lesson #1 - The USMS only does this kind of thing when ordered by the Court. Otherwise it’s the witness/defender responsibility.

Lesson #2 - You’re an idiot if you think I’m going to give you the billing number.

So I do a little research, discover there is a Court Order, and proceed to call hotels. Fourth hotel has a room available for tonight only (the witness will be here indefinitely). I book it anyway.

As I’m on the phone with the hotel, two attorneys come to the window and are helped by MD (who booked the flight at 5:30pm yesterday for the witness to fly today). Turns out said witness is not on the flight that’s due to land in an hour.

The beautiful thing about this. I hang up after getting the confirmation number and I hear them say to MD, “You can tell her to cancel that hotel room for Witness #1. He won’t be coming in until early next week most likely.”

What the ???

The Public Defender’s office is a royal pain in the rear. We do them the favor on this stuff, but they act like supercilious, pompous jerks about the whole thing.

Lawyers… *grumble, grumble*

**Let me say that I have friends who are lawyers. But Shakespeare was absolutely correct when he said to kill them all.**

UPDATE: About 15-20 minutes after cancelling the hotel room, the outer door opens. In walk three PDs on this case, they ask to speak to the Supervisor, or MD. I get the Supervisor (who I love - he said to tell them he’s be out, but he was going to make them wait a bit. Heh). Once he comes out to talk to them, the chat for several minutes.

When he comes back in the office, he comes to MD’s office, where I am as well...new wrinkle - there’s a minor coming in and the kid, who was going to stay with relatives, now needs a hotel room. But they said it could wait until tomorrow. So tomorrow I get to deal with this crap again.

Can you book a hotel room for a minor that’s alone? I’m not sure, but I’m going to find out. Joy…