I work at an older, established law firm. Our founding partner retired last year - and none too soon - he has to use a walker and was beginning to ramble and not recognize people he had known for decades.
He has an agreement with the senior partners that he can come in once a week to an office set aside for him and take care of personal business, using his one-time secretary. But last week, after he had gone to lunch, he wheeled himself to the men’s room and got lost in there for half an hour. He forgot where he was and what he was doing.
I heard afterwards that this wasn’t the first time something like this had happened.
Obviously, in this state, he’s a huge liability. What if he wheels himself into a vacant office by mistake and falls in there with no one knowing? Or down the elevators and into the busy street and gets hit by a car?
The trouble is, no one wants to say no to him. He headed the firm for forty years. No one wants to “take the keys away” from grandpa.
What is OP’s role or position in the firm? It seems like this is high above where anyone but the most senior could make a significant decision. Keep your head down.
Oh, I’m keeping my head down, all right. I’m a secretary here. But I often must sub in for his secretary if she’s out of the office on Wednesdays, which is what happened on the lost-in-the-bathroom incident.
I do know that the partners are discussing what to do about it. The old partner in question is testy and stubborn. Alcohol probably contributes to the problem. He comes from the lunch-drinking era, and when he comes in on Wednesdays, likes to go to his old haunt across the street and drink during lunch. That can’t help his brain function and might mess with any medications he may be on. This might be a reason he still wants to come in to the office - so he can drink without family supervision.
Maybe his wife can have his doctor insist that he give up coming in to the office. That’s how the “taking away the keys” issue is handled, I’ve heard.
Why is this a liability?
It’s an unpleasant situation, yes. But until his family has him declared incompetent and somebody takes legal guardianship over him, he is still a legal adult,responsible for himself.
Suppose his problems were just physical, not mental.(say, a weak heart): imagine that he still came to work each day…and then dies at his desk from a heart attack.
Everybody would be shocked, but would you say that he had been “a huge liability”? I think you would just express condolences, and then after the funeral, make a weak joke that he died while doing what he loved, at the place he loved.
Why do you think it is a worse liability for you if an elderly partner dies at work from a dementia-caused accident, rather than from a heart attack?.
There may be some expectation that a secretary is responsible for keeping tabs on the founding partner. If, when the FP got lost in the men’s room, the OP was chastised for not realizing FP hadn’t been seen for some time, the liability might not be legal so much as it is professional and ethical.
To reply to your last question, the way that it’s different is this: if the FP had a heart attack, nobody would be to blame because nobody could have prevented it. If, however, FP falls in the men’s room while going from toilet to walker and is too disoriented to cry out for help, that IS preventable. No matter how cranky the FP is, nobody wants him dying alone and confused on a men’s room floor. At least, I hope they don’t.
I used to be a substitute teacher, and often worked at one elementary school. One day, I saw a woman I didn’t recognize talking to the principal, who was gently escorting her to the office. Later I found out that she was a former principal with dementia, who believed she was the current principal, who would occasionally get out of the house she shared with her daughter and head to the school. All the permanent staff would keep an eye out for her and let the principal know, while the school secretary called the woman’s daughter.
That once a week he comes in is probably the only break his wife gets from him.
The firm should really assign someone to stay with him the whole time he’s there if they’re going to let him come in, not just assume a secretary will babysit him. And maybe that someone should see to it that he’s served nonalcoholic beverages at the bar.
The problem is that what the gentleman really requires is supervision and restraint, for his own safety and health, that he doesn’t seem to want to submit to.
I don’t get the impression from the OP that anybody at the firm is grudging him some “kindness and indulgence”, just that they don’t want to be kindly indulging him in his potentially dangerous incompetence to look after himself.
Frankly, if I’m heading towards dementia, I’d much rather indulge is a nice if precarious weekly liquid lunch and a tumble around the copy room than undergo supervision and restraint.
Surely the kindness and indulgence from the firm was the bucketloads of money he made off it in the 40 years he managed it. If the firm is wasting employees’ time (which means money) on babysitting him, it sounds to me like the wife needs to take some of the ‘kindness and indulgence’ sitting in their bank account to get him a handler and let the firm crack on with, you know, providing lawyerly services to their clients.
I find it hard to believe that it is in anyone’s job description to babysit someone with dementia. Isn’t there special training needed? How is FP getting to the office? Is he driving himself?
When I was at Toastmasters, we had a member who had early stage Alzheimers (or so he said.) He was often inappropriate and disruptive at meetings, and when he gave speeches, they were rambling messes. I felt so bad for the guy, but when he stood up in the middle of a meeting and asked a new, young female member if she was sleeping with the male guest she’d brought (she disappeared, never to return) I had enough. I was VP of Membership at the time and I brought it up to the other officers. Bottom line, we were not equipped to babysit him, his actions were confusing to guests and disruptive to the members, and we asked him to resign the club. I think the other partners need to step up and deal with this situation so it is not detrimental to the business. Whether he stays home or a qualified caregiver accompanies him is up to them. But to ask an admin assistant to babysit is beyond their pay grade and is quite frankly cowardly.
To clarify, the retired partner is treated with kindness and indulgence. A working partner always accompanies him at lunch (while trying vainly to keep his wine consumption down). Back in the office, he has doors opened for him and is kindly greeted. Errands are run for him and personal administrative work is done.
But we, like so many other businesses, are short-staffed. When his secretary is out, I cover her desk and work for eleven attorneys total. I try to unobtrusively walk past his office a few times a day to make sure he’s upright and conscious, but sometimes I’m too buried in work to remember.
He and his wife are very wealthy. They can afford a private nurse, respite care, you name it. The issue is just that the partnership here is too reluctant to put any restraint on his continuing to come to work. And once he’s here, they don’t know how to deal with him. We’re not a memory care facility, and no one has much time to keep an eye on him.
Teela, one of the first thoughts I had after reading your OP is that he’ll die 12 months or so after he gets kicked out of the office. Lots of people do, who get forcibly retired from something they’ve done most of their life. OTOH, the second thought I had was, how is this affecting business? Clients are kept away from him, right? He’s not being inappropriate on the phone or email, is he? Is he being inappropriate towards staff, besides getting lost in the men’s room? EDIT: To put a fine point on it, is he behaving in a way that will expose the partnership to liability?
It does sound like there are inadequate resources to supervise him. Can you put together something to show your management committee how much billable time you’re having to spend worrying about him, versus taking care of paying clients, and show them how much more dollars they’re wasting by not having a law clerk/assistant/gofer watching him instead? In my time in legal offices—besides learning that lawyers are terrible administrators—I saw that when money talked, the bosses would usually listen. Even if they were deaf to everything else.