Assistant District Attorneys were scratching their heads today over an Office-wide e-mail announcing that the doors to the Southwest stairwell would be "off limits to all employees" on the 6th floor.
For those of you unfamiliar with the layout of the Harris County Criminal Justice Center, there are stairwells in the Northeast, Northwest, Southeast, and Southwest corners of the building. The stairwells are more or less off limits to the general public, but are useful to the Assistant District Attorneys traveling from floor to floor within the Office. Most of those doors are guarded by a cardreader, which beeps when an office personnel's ID card accesses it.
The Sixth Floor houses the Administrative section of the D.A.'s Office, with Pat Lykos' office being on the Northwest corner of the building, and Leitner's down the hall. The rest of the floor is comprised of some other divisions, including the Appellate and Writs Divisions, and the Office of the general counsel.
Well, apparently the noise of the card reader beeping and the door opening and closing has proven to be just too much for one of the new Bureau Chiefs. The e-mail sent out detailed the fact that prosecutors would now need to walk to the other side of the building if they wished to access the stairs to the Sixth Floor. The Bureau Chief in question could not be disturbed by their thoughtless noise.
Ah yes, because the rest of the Assistant District Attorneys get the luxury of working in pristine silence so that they can only hear the sounds of crickets chirping from the bayou.
This is one of those office-wide e-mails that leaves me at a bit of a loss for words. Seriously? The guy needs so much peace and quiet that the rest of the Office will have to walk the equivalent of a city block to get where they are going? Seems like a rather silly new policy to me.
In a possibly unrelated note, several Assistant D.A.'s have reported smelling cigarette smoke in the stairwell around the Sixth Floor . . .
14 comments:
I received that email along with Jim's 0800 email. This shit is just ridiculous. It is beginning to be funny to me. One thing Jim didn't note was what time we are supposed to leave. Many of us take the 0800 email to mean that we should leave at 5 every day. He can truely make this a gov't job if he wants us to. Did you hear about the 0800 email Murray?
Absolute power often corrupts absolutely as evidenced by the unabashed arrogance of many politicians.
When politicians believe the people are here to serve them rather than the other way around you get a Pat Lykos or a Chuck Rosenthal.
Anon 9:47 a.m.,
I am aware of the 0800 e-mail. I will try to get to it next. They have just been putting out so much material lately that I'm having to be more choosy about what I write.
Hey 10:01:
Pat and Chuck have something else in common, to wit: inappropriate above-the-law stairwell activity.
I for one would rather endure an isolated burst of Blackcats than the chronic stench of Marlboros and troll secretions.
Someone needs to set up video surveillance in the stairwells for Channel 13.
So who is the genius who needs absolute silence to create his works of art in his office?
Isn't smoking in the CJS building a Class C?
I say pop the troll and get a special prosecutor. The transparent "Rule of Law" demands it!!!
It's time for at least 1 ADA to man up.
Note: a retaliatory termination or harassment will be worth a lot of ching ching and you'd have plaintiff lawyers banging at the door to sign you up.
Who seriously gives a crap if some DA's can't use a particular stairwell? I mean really--are there not much, much larger fish to fry? What's the point in whining about every little change and making a big deal out of it when there is no need to? Why do all of my sentences end with question marks?
Arthur, that's kind of my point.
Instead of the Lykos Administration doing something meaningful to start living up to her campaign promises, she's making small and petty rule changes that seem more designed towards making it a tougher work environment for the prosecutors. This one about blocking access to the door just seems like the most trivial of them all (at least so far). Like I said awhile back, I'll stop pointing out stupid things the Lykos Administration is doing the second they stop doing stupid things.
Check out the upcoming Commissioners Court agenda. Facilities will be coming over to the 6th Floor to fix Pat's smokebreak problem.
We also received a new email saying no more all prosecutor emails. I didn't realize how much your blog affects them. So we have 3 new rules in the past 2 weeks:
1. The 0800 Rule. I can't wait for your blog on that one.
2. The Stairwell Limitation Rule.
3. No all prosecutor email rule.
Plus the old new ones, no keeper cases rule, post mortem after a loss rule, call them judge rule, and I can't remember the rest. Sweeping changes over here. Please add the ones I forgot.
What's the 0800 rule?
Please someone elaborate on the 0800 email. I must have missed that email.
What does no more all prosecutor emails mean? More importantly, who is the delicate genius?
Smoking? Nasty habit. Addictive. Cancer. Pain. Death. Sure not worth the risk. How stupid to continue to smoke when there are so many ways to quit. All it really takes is a little character...
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