The only thing I hate more than tallying billable hours at an office job is the entire city of Chicago. I lived in Chicago my first year out of college and it was hands-down, the worst year of my life. I moved to Chicago in the fall of 2002 to study improv, but somehow found myself working as a paralegal, barely doing comedy, hardly making enough money to pay my bills, and wading through a sea of depression.

God knows the paralegal gig didn’t help the crippling depression part.

I’m eager-to-please and hardworking. I tend to obey rules blindly and follow directions, so things at the law firm started off swimmingly.

Each paralegal tallied his or her time using a program called Timeslips. Timeslips has drop-down menus for your name, the client’s company name, the client’s specific case name, the type of legal petition, and the amount of time spent. Our office hours were 8:30 to 5:00pm — a 7.5 hour work day (with an hour for lunch). We were each required to bill at least 6.5 hours a day, with one hour of “general time,” which was whatever time you simply couldn’t bill. It might sound like a lot, but one hour per day isn’t much when you have to use it for everything: organizing your desk, filling out Timeslips, bathroom trips, getting coffee and water in the kitchen, chatting with co-workers, etc.

During my orientation (which was lead by a woman whose title was “Paralegal Liaison” and who possessed a bizarrely fierce loyalty to a company for which she was an office drone and punchline for paralegal jokes) I was told that on the time slip for your General Time, you didn’t need to write any specifics in the Memo field, as you would if it were filling out Timeslips for a real client. For a real client, in the Memo field you would write something like: Drafted and revised H-1B petition, conferred with attorney, took phone call. But for General Time, no specifics were needed because what would you write? “Took dump, regretted Indian food extravaganza from previous night”? We’re all adults here, a blank General Time slip was fine. Or so I was told.

Three months into my brief tenure as a paralegal, I was called into the Paralegal Liaison’s office. She sat me down and asked if I understood Timeslips and how to appropriately track my time. I said yes, I tallied my time at the end of each day and everything was fine.

She then brought up my General Time slips and earnestly inquired, “You’re leaving those slips blank—what are you doing with that time? I mean, we have no idea what you’re doing during that General Time — it’s just blank. You’re supposed to writing in the Memo box.”

I was surprised, as I had been told the exact opposite — BY HER — but I simply nodded and said I’d remember to list specifics in the Memo box going forward. I apologized, left for the day, and went straight to Pippen’s, a bar just off Michigan Ave that had $8 pitchers, to meet my friend Kate, a fellow New Englander. Our evenings usually consisted of cheap beer, tears, and discussions of why in the hell Chicagoans thought that Big 10 football mattered.

I asked my only ally amongst the paralegal pool (the gay, Russian paralegal who collected kitsch) about what he wrote on his General Time slip. What was I supposed to write, as far as specifics for time that was ostensibly untally-able? Dmitry told me that he put almost the same exact thing on there every day: Replenished beverages, cleaned desk, organized files. So I followed directions and started putting that on my General Time time slips, too.

I’ll do what I’m told, even if it’s moronic. And I figured that “replenishing beverages” was polite code for “taking a dump” and I knew I can’t bill that time, despite how long it might take.

Three more months passed and I was called into the Paralegal Liaisons’ office once again. I had a moment of déjà-vu, as the meeting started off just like the previous General Time discussion, only this time, she was flabbergasted that I was giving so MUCH information in the Memo box. I sat there shaking my head, as she rattled off a monologue so pathetic it was hilarious. “I’m not sure why you are writing specifics in the Memo field. It’s General Time, Selena, we don’t need to know what you are doing, OK? Although the partners agree that you ARE spending far too much time replenishing beverages.”

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