TO WIT: TALE OF HOFFMAN
A good secretary, as we all know, must be intelligent, imaginative, diligent, creative, loyal, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent if she is to serve any function beyond the consumption of oxygen. Unfortunately, Philinda, my recent and temporary secretarial substitute, possessed none of these qualities, save perhaps reverence. Judging by the quality of her work, she apparently revered minimum wage.
I won’t bore you with the gory details of how it was I came to need a temporary replacement for my regular secretary, who does possess those qualities, but need one I did. So there Philinda was, the first thing of a Monday morning, just as sweet and tidy as she could possibly be, refusing to make a pot of coffee.
My practice limped along through that first week, pretty much as a result of its own momentum, ‘till about Thursday, when I checked the calendar I keep against the calendar my secretary keeps, as I habitually do, just to make sure we’re sinking at the same pace.
“Who’s Hoffman,” I asked, noting that she had scheduled an appointment for me for a week from Monday, “and what is he doing in my book?”
“I don’t know,” she replied, without missing so much as a single down-stroke of her emery board.
“What does he want?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why is he coming to see me?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s his telephone number?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s his first name?”
“I don’t know.”
My next question was to have been “What’s two plus two,” but wisdom borne by experience prevailed, and I instead used an incisor to slice off the front of my tongue. You see, I have two rules about my clients, I follow them fanatically, and I insist my secretaries do likewise. Philinda had obeyed neither, but it was in part my fault. I had conveyed her instructions in multi-syllabic words.
As for the first rule, I insist on knowing beforehand why a client is coming to see me. This affords me the opportunity to look up a little law in advance of the appointment, if necessary, so as to avoid looking like an idiot at first impression. I have learned over the years that second impression is quite soon enough.
Second, I insist on getting a phone number so that I can contact the client to reschedule the appointment if necessary. The rigors of a busy and successful practice sometime require a certain juggling of schedule if the ends of justice are to be met. It is also sometimes the only means by which I can cancel to go play racquetball.
Having neither a phone number nor a clue as to the reason for the appointment, I found myself by Hoffman transfixed. However I have no achieved my measure of success without a fair degree of self-reliance, and I handled this crisis just as I have handled so many other crises in the past. I called my real secretary at home and instructed her to find Hoffman.
Next morning she reported the bad news. The phone book, she said, listed fifteen Hoffmans in this town, and one hundred and three in all the communities in the book. The Post Office showed one hundred and forty five Hoffmans in this zip code, and the local IRS office reported that six thousand four hundred and ninety three Hoffmans filed tax returns from this district last year. That didn’t include Hofmans, Hofmanns, Hoffmanns or Hophmans.
“Nith twy,” I said, as by this time my tongue had almost completely healed.
Just between us, Hoffman was scattering my marbles. I could not eat, I could not sleep for fear of Hoffman. Who was he? What did he want from me? Why, in God’s name, wouldn’t he leave me alone?
The problem, it seems to me now in the cool safe harbor of analytical retrospection, was that, like many of my colleagues, I had become a slave to my calendar. It isn’t hard to understand. After all, time is the lawyer’s worst enemy, even more so than the judiciary. Time attends to all of us, and carries in its rucksack such pleasantries as briefing schedules, trial lists and limitation statutes.
My first and, save death, my only line of defense is my calendar. As a sole practitioner, I feel as if I am under constant attack. There have been too many middle-of-the-night moments when, cold-sweated and struck limp with terror, I have bolted from bed to dresser to consult my calendar, certain of certain doom. Though it has yet to appear, that’s precious little safeguard against its imminent arrival. Calendar may be meager control, but it’s all the control there is, and when that goes, surely apocalypse follows.
Hoffman-Monday came and he showed up at the appointed hour, carrying a rucksack full of law books he wanted to sell me. I was so relieved that Hoffman had turned out to be not a real person that I heaved him out with less than full ardor. He didn’t even hit the curb, but it was of little moment. After all, he had set me free, albeit unwittingly and I just could not muster up my typical professional zeal. Besides, the sun was shining and I still had time to make my racquetball game.
© 1987 – S. Sponte, Esq.