It is a little known fact that when you take the elevator up from the lobby to the 4th floor to get to the lobby of our office, you could also press the down button on the elevator and get to our offices. Yes, that’s right. Carpenter Hazlewood has two floors in our building.  A year or so ago we outgrew the 4th floor and the only space the building had open was on the bottom floor, and a small group of us had to move.

The name of that bottom floor is very dependent on who is talking. If you were moving, it was the Dungeon. If you were convincing people to move, it was the Garden Level! To the building management, it is simply the Parking Level. To us, it is the Basement. Isn’t that really what the lowest floor is—a Basement? We never saw why the name had to evoke such emotion, and Client Relations was getting moved. Truth be told, the basement dwellers weren’t getting such a bad deal. If you have never been behind our building, it is gorgeous. There is a nice green park with tall pine trees and a shaded little pond with bridges over it, complete with ducks who deliver ducklings right on time every spring. And the Basement Dwellers have windows looking right out onto the park now. Some of the offices even have doors that open out there!

So the Basement Dwellers had the killer view, but they we were cut off socially. It was Client Relations, the 4 person management and accounting team (all females)…and Scott. We took to calling ourselves the Basement Babes…and Scott. We developed our own little culture down there, as isolated people often do. We developed bad habits like just yelling across the space for each other instead of walking into each others’ offices or using the phone system. Why would we do that when we practically see the person we needed? Basement bonding. Good times. We were just getting ready to order Basement Babes T-shirts (minus Scott). Then the IT guys moved down…the fun was over for good. But computer help is just a step away. That is not such a bad thing when your keyboard freezes. And the view is still really nice.

Most of you probably know that I am married to attorney Scott Carpenter. A few years ago we owned a rental house in Gilbert. Some friends of ours were moving out of state and had planned to sell their starter house to their neighbor “as is”. At the last minute the neighbor backed out of the deal. Our friends had not prepared the house for the market and needed to move the next day. We assured our friends we would take care of it. We cleaned out our savings and came up with a down payment to buy the house. We fixed it up enough to hire a management company and rent it out.

The renter was a single mom. All was fine until we began to receive the occasional letter about weeds, a dead bush, etc.  The twist was that our law firm represented this particular association. We discussed hiring a landscaper and adding it to the tenant’s rent. But then new letters arrived. The trash can sat out. An unauthorized basketball hoop went up.  When I got the final letter, I asked Scott, “Can you sue yourself?” He was exasperated. “Of course not!” He snapped. “I would have to refer the case to a competitor for conflict of interest and they would sue me!”

Needless to say we declined to renew the lease at the end of the year and sold the house. We decided we were not meant to be landlords. I never want to receive another letter saying Carpenter Hazlewood might sue us! I can’t afford their fees.

For some reason clocks seem to be an issue around here. We suppose because time is important to attorneys. They are always rushing to be somewhere, they book their calendars to the minute and they bill…well, you know. There has been a bit of a debate about what kind of clocks to get for the conference rooms. We have a large clock in the education suite with Roman numerals on it that is very nice, thank you. When we were recently discussing the fact that we were looking for new clocks for the conference rooms, one of the attorneys said, “Please get one with real numbers. I can’t read the one in the Education Suite.”

Really? Did we just hear that? How do people get through law school without being able to read Roman numeral clocks?

Scott wants big black clocks with huge red numbers on them so you will feel like you are in a prison or a school cafeteria. He actually ordered some off Amazon. We hid them when they got here and we hope he just forgets he ever ordered them. They are hideous.

We bought some clocks that seemed to match the décor of the conference rooms. They got a big thumbs down. Too small, the people declared. They were returned. We shopped again and the next batch was declared acceptable. They were placed in the office manager’s area. A few weeks passed and they were somehow placed back in the office of Client Relations with some hooks. We were asked when we were going to hang the clocks we purchased. We are here to relate to clients. But somehow, the little jobs that have no one assigned to them become ours. How did that happen? How did we become the interior decorators? We decided to accept it as a compliment on our excellent taste and find the hammer.

So next time you are here, notice the new clocks with the numbers. They are really nice. And they are hung perfectly.

Welcome to the first edition of Behind the Scenes. We created this blog so you could get to know us a little better in a different light. That AND we’re sick of people asking us, “So what’s it really like to work in a law firm?” Instead of answering that question a million times we thought we would let you see for yourself. So we’re taking you, well, Behind the Scenes.

We’ve noticed that when people think of lawyers they think one of two things: Either the attorneys spend all day in court trying cases with defendants screaming at them, “YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH”; or that all of us around here wear dark suits and run around carrying briefcases talking in hushed tones. Not even close. No one has ever pulled a Jack Nicholson on one of our attorneys from the stand, (not that we know of anyway) and no one here runs. Ever. But it’s not all legal issues and serious conversations either. It actually gets downright noisy in here. In fact, we had to move our break room to the basement due to all the lunchtime shenanigans. Apparently we were disturbing the peace upstairs. It actually worked out better though because now we have more room for our Wii bowling tournaments. True story: last year during our Wii bowling tournament one of the partners (Javier) actually tore his calf muscle running up to the screen. Good thing we have worker’s comp!

We really hope that you’ll join us on this tour of our place and we hope you enjoy our stories. We have some doozies. We promise you won’t be disappointed.

Shannon & Heidi