In 1997, after a five-year hiatus, I returned to the law firm of ____, ____, ____, ____ & ____, this time in its downtown L.A. office. I was doing the same basic proofreading job that I had done in New York, but because the office was smaller, I was assigned simple paralegal jobs and held the title Legal Assistant.

That June, one of the few official proofreaders, a kind, well-spoken Vietnam veteran who admired my proofreading ability and complimented me by telling another proofreader that he would want me in his foxhole, went on disability. In his place the legal assistant supervisor, a dull pregnant woman who was probably considered pretty by sorority standards 15 years earlier and who another employee likened to a Polish prison guard at Auschwitz — not fundamentally evil but the sort who loved her job — hired his temporary replacement from a local employment agency.

The temp’s name was Christine, Chris for short, and she was a vaguely Asian-looking though probably Caucasian woman in her early 50s. She had a round, gaunt face with black permed hair and wore glasses with large square frames and swooping end pieces that connected at the bottom of the eye rims. Her rawboned frame suggested copious doses of Dexedrine, as did her non-stop chattering, which assailed me as I tried to redline a 200-page M&A agreement.

The Polish prison guard had informed me an hour into my shift that I was to provide guidance to Chris whenever she needed it, which was why she now sat across from me shooting spittle on my document as she babbled on.

“My daughter lived in Japan for about a year,” she said as I steadied my ruler to underline several lines of revised text with a red felt tip.

“Wow, really,” I said without looking up.

“She considered staying longer. She taught English. They pay teachers well there. They all want to learn English.”

“Really? They do?” I was on social autopilot.

“Sure they do! The better for them to communicate and control us. You’ll see. They’ve already started.”

I glanced up at her. Her views of Japan were as out-of-date as her glasses, and I guess I needed a good look at her to make sure I hadn’t misheard.

My mistake. She took the eye contact as permission to rant. Her four-page proofreading job lay opened at the first original and revised pages, and I thought: How do people get away with doing nothing, while I get blackballed for finishing my jobs quickly and then playing a quick game of solitaire? Why isn’t the PPP spying on her?

“My daughter made a lot of money over there. She makes $30,000 at her job now, and it isn’t remotely the amount she did over in Okinawa.”

“I heard Japan’s a lot more expensive,” I said.

“She was given a per diem. She didn’t have to pay for anything. But she couldn’t live there forever, not with her fiancé waiting for her back home.”

I pointed to her job.  "Do you have any questions about that?"

“Oops, better get busy,” she said, and there was a 30-second pocket of silence which allowed me to finish my revised page 11.