My office thinks I should spend my lunch hour, unpaid, dealing with endless walk-in clients.
We usually lock the front door during lunch because we only have a few employees at this office and they want to leave for lunch. I, on the other hand, typically don’t leave because I prefer to read in my office.
Well, they’ve figured this out and are now suggesting it’s okay to leave the front door open because I can “just deal with anybody that’s pops in real quick.” The problem with this is there are nonstop clients stopping in unannounced and they all do it during the lunch hour because, as you may have guessed, they are also on their lunch.
The result of this is that I no longer have a lunch break and when I brought up the fact that I’m not being paid while I spend an hour dealing with clients, I was told it’s fine because “it’s just a quick drop off or pop in and not actual work.”
I told them I’m going to start leaving at lunch because I don’t want to spend it talking to annoying clients who show up without appointments and now they are making it a gigantic deal and saying “well clients are now used to it and they need us to be open at that time.”
Am I crazy for thinking it’s not okay to expect someone to give up their lunch every day because “you aren’t even doing anything anyway?”
Edit to add: They don’t stagger people for lunch because we only have four people: two attorneys, a paralegal (me), and a legal assistant/receptionist. The legal assistant leaves for lunch and obviously the attorneys aren’t going to deal with walk-ins. We used to lock the door for years and it was no problem at all, but now that they realized I don’t leave, they want me to stay and deal with clients. It’s not even just walk in clients now either - they are specifically telling clients to come during the lunch hour to drop off or pick things up because “our paralegal will be here.”
I should note that I don’t do any receptionist duties. Like I don’t ever cover when ours is out. If she is out or on the phone, the calls reroute to one of our other office receptionists. If she is out all day for vacation or sick, we lock the door all day. So it’s not a case of me just not wanting to do my job even more; it literally is something I never do. My job here is to bill 1,900+ hours a year and make them money.
A further note is that I don’t even do any work with the attorneys at this satellite office. I work in a completely different area of law with attorneys at our other offices. I just physically go to this office because it’s the one closest to where I live. The reason I mention this is because I know absolutely nothing about these clients who stop in. I don’t know their case, I don’t know what they are coming in for, I don’t know anything about that area of law or where they should sign something…so that makes it even more frustrating. I know as much as a random stranger does about these people coming in and I’m supposed to spend my lunch hour assisting them…for free.