Are you the keymaster?

Interesting question. And I have an even more interesting answer. That answer would be "Yes." But only in a limited sense - - one of my current church assignments is to keep track of the keys for our meetinghouse. I am not a gatekeeper, nor am I the Gatekeeper (Zuul), but I have known a few gatekeepers. Just yesterday I went to set up an appointment with an executive - - I had a good-natured exchange with his assistant, expressly acknowledging my being subject to her great power and authority. And that interaction brought back a few memories, one of them somewhat like one of those flashbacks David Carradine's character used to have on "Kung Fu." After my second summer of law school I had an internship in a corporate law department in Chicago. This was a pretty blue collar environment, and the first day on the job my boss took me down to the huge company cafeteria, where one wall of the room was lined with vending machines. He bought me an ice cream sandwich, and sat me down for a talk. I've never forgotten one thing he hold me, which at the time seemed to have come out of nowhere. He essentially told me to treat my "support people" well throughout my career, that they are essential to anything you want to accomplish. Hmmm. I'll call this the "Chicago Doctrine." Right out of law school I was working in a courthouse. One day I stayed in the courtroom for lunch. I dutifully took about 5 or 6 phone messages, then handed them to the court clerk when she returned from lunch. She quickly looked at each, and threw all but 1 or 2 of them away. She saw I was somewhat taken aback, so she explained. She pointed to 1 message - - she had already returned the call. She went through the others, and advised that each attorney who left a message was a jerk (or words to that effect). Sounds like these attorneys had not treated my judge's clerk very well, and it affected what they were trying to accomplish. The Chicago Doctrine said nothing about how to treat a judge's clerk. So I added Addendum 1 to the Chicago doctrine - - treat the support people of others well also (some may argue that Addendum 1 was overly broad, that it should have instead stated "treat the support people of important other people well"). Now, I suppose these things should not have to be taught to anyone, they should be common sense, or common courtesy. But remember, we're dealing with lawyers here, on topics of this nature they may need to be taught carefully, using very small words. Later in my experience at the court, I pulled files for two cases. The documents were a mess. The same attorney was on both cases, but with respect to documents submitted by that attorney, the name of a case would be associated with one case number in one document, but in another document the case would be associated with the other case number. I took them to the judge. I stood there as he used his speaker phone to call the attorney. "We seem to have some confusion here," said the judge. The judge explained the problem. The attorney responded "I'm sorry judge, my secretary must have . . . " The judge cut him off immediately, interjecting: "I'm sure your secretary does fine work." How could the attorney respond other than the way he did: "Yes, Your Honor, she does. I must have . . . " Even with Addendm 1, the Chicago Doctrine would not have saved this attorney. So I had to add Addendum 2 - - don't blame your support people for your own mistakes. I wonder if there is some more general principle that one might follow, maybe I don't need the Chicago Docrine or the Addenda. Well, I can't imagine what that would be . . .