What Makes this Job Fun

Considering that my business involves dealing with some of the worst things people can do to each another on a daily basis, one might think that the practice of criminal law is not fun. Oh, to the contrary. Trying getting stories like these out of people who work in normal offices.

Yesterday morning I headed off to the courthouse, as is my custom, to go fight for truth, justice, etc. I arrive to find half of the defense lawyers (and defendants) in town milling around outside the courthouse and the Travis County Sheriff's Office informing everyone that they can't come into the building. I soon learn that something set the fire alarm off, but no one is quiet sure what yet. Despite the unknown cause of the alarm, the sheriff's office decides to let attorneys into the building (wistfully hoping for our demise?), but not any of the other people - leaving the lawyers client-less for court.

Once inside, I learned that the fire alarm going off in turn makes the elevators a potential deathtrap. The sheriff's office, in their collective government wisdom, proceeds to put yellow crime scene tape (three long pieces of it) horizontally across the first floor elevators so people wouldn't use them to go up. The only problem with this approach is that they didn't let the people on the 8 floors above know not to use the elevators, so those folks continued to get into the potential death trap and ride it down. Upon arriving at the first floor, the elevator doors would open, and the occupants would stare in confusion at the crime scene tape trapping them in the elevator. After a short consultation with their fellow elevator-mates, people would then crawl through the crime scene tape to freedom. I watched with enjoyment from a nearby bench as each new round of unsuspecting folks solved the case of the crime scene tape, and couldn't help but wonder - what other job could possibly match the practice of law?