Flying Purple Donkeys

Since Sara brought up the flying purple donkeys in her last comment to me, I figured now is a good time to explain this interesting phenomenon. So here goes -

At my job, our cases are broken down into five dockets, each of us handling one docket. Now each person's docket can have anywhere from one firm that is really large to a long list of small firms to deal with. These dockets are completely our responsibility - we handle every one of the cases in our docket and are in charge of the deadlines, discovery, letters, anything associated with the case. As a result, we are also ultimately blameable in the eyes of our boss for anything that goes wrong with our docket and cases, be it a missed deadline, a missing document, whatever.

So when Sara first started, I was having a hard time understanding why our file clerk felt the need to throw away documents that we had put to filing. Now granted a LOT of what we get on a daily basis is trash for the mere fact that service lists are wrong and we are no longer in a case or it's just basically things that we really don't care about or need to know from other firms. We all do our own purging of our mail bins as necessary, but when I put something to filing, it's because I want to have it in the file. There are no strict rules about what we should/should not throw away, so everyone kind of has their own system and that's the way it should be depending on their comfort level with what they need/don't need and the case itself. For some reason, the file clerk decided that she would take it upon herself to determine what was/wasn't important in my filing as well as my officemate, Kelly's, filing and we were discussing how frustrating this process was because we were the ones (not her) that were ultimately responsible if something was missing.

So I said to Sara and Kelly that I should be able to put flying purple donkeys in my files if I wanted them there because it was no one else's business than my own. Of course, after I said this, all three of us starting laughing at the absurdity of flying purple donkeys and yet we understood the point I was trying to make. During lunch, I left the office to run an errand for the wedding, and Sara went to the internet and printed a picture of a donkey with wings and then proceeded to search the entire office in search of a purple marker or highlighter so she could color it in. I found this fun piece of paper on my keyboard and have had it stapled to my cubicle wall ever since. :-) So that's the story of the flying purple donkey!!!!!