227. Clutter, clutter everywhere

I was given a copy of the new book A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder--How Crammed Closets, Cluttered Offices, and On-the-Fly Planning Make the World a Better Place, but unfortunately I lost it on my kitchen counter.  I'm confident it will reappear in the fullness of time, as the piles naturally churn.  In the meantime I take solace in the Economist review:

Untidiness, hoarding, procrastination and improvisation are not bad habits, the authors argue, but often more sensible than meticulous planning, storage and purging of possessions.

That is because the tidiness lobby counts the benefits of neatness, but not its costs. A rough storage system (important papers close to the keyboard, the rest distributed in loosely related piles on every flat surface) takes very little time to manage. Filing every bit of paper in a precise category, with colour-coded index tabs and a neat system of cross-referencing, will certainly take longer. And by the end, it may not save any time.

I've long been a believer - Well, not exactly a believer, a devotee, shall we say, of the horizontal filing system.  I once read a suggestion that the ideal desk would take the form of a gigantic lazy Susan, like those you sometimes see in Chinese restaurants but without the table beneath.   It would be built on a scale to fill the entire office, with room for a couple chairs accessible from the door.  Think of the savings in file folders alone!

 But there's such a thing as taking a good thing too far.  Under the headline "Jurist could lose job over messy habits," the Los Angeles Times reports:

By his own admission, Riverside County Superior Court Judge Robert G. Spitzer's chambers were so messy and disorganized that it frequently took him weeks, if not months, to find his own court orders.

Spitzer would stack overdue orders on the courtroom's windowsills and banisters without making sure his clerk had processed them. As a result, some cases were delayed a year or longer — or never resolved, according to the California Commission on Judicial Performance.

Alas, if only an Oxford don-worthy untidiness were his only sin.  The Commission (its history and powers are well-described here) charged that he failed to act on many matters, true - but also that he backdated documents, on one occasion causing a party's appeal to be dismissed because it appeared the party had missed a crucial deadline.  He's alleged to have had one case - a small claims case involving a roofing company - pending for 6 years, until he eventually conducted a second trial, apparently to remind himself of the facts.  All this time he was routinely signing pay vouchers in which he swore he had no matters that had been pending for over six months - or so the Commission alleges.

He also is said to have based his decisions during trial on conversations he had with people, including witnesses, outside the presence of the attorneys.  He jawboned the mother of a person killed by a drunk driver, trying to get her to agree to a plea bargain that the prosecutor had never offered - and then threatened to dismiss the charges unless the prosecutor changed his tune.  Or so it is alleged.

To top it off, the Commission says, when it sent him a "preliminary investigation letter",  Spitzer didn't respond.   Not so, says the judge.  He claims he actually did file a response, six months after he received the letter.

So what's the judge's explanation for the problems in his office, for improper contacts with witnesses, for trying to use a victim's mother to pressure the DA?  "'In every instance, it was his obsession with preserving judicial resources' and keeping trials from being delayed, [his attorney Reg] Vitek said."

Comments

[John Trosko]

Joel,

What's happening to the Judge in Riverside County is so, so sad. As a Professional Organizer here in Los Angeles, I see many folks like him, but not as bad. What a liability to the City, and to the County with his behavior. He needs help, and a full-time court-appointed organizer.