Yes, I am the Assistant, but I am not YOUR assistant. Do not walk all the way across the fucking building to have me make FOUR copies for you. Are you so stupid that you cannot figure out the copy machine? And the same goes for faxes. When you need one fucking page faxed, do it your goddamn self. I am not your personal lackey for these things. In the time it takes you to walk over here and ask me to do it you could have done it yourself, and the next time you do it I’m going to tell you so.
Holy Crap. Where do they grow these people? Unbelievable.
I know whereof you speak,** Indy**. I was just about to start my own thread with the same title and relate this little tidbit:
Sales rep spills his slushie on the floor, throws A papertowel on it, then leaves for an “appointment.” No one else in the room bothers to get up and remedy the mess. Why should they when I, the Sales Assistant/“skirt”/AssWiper, am present? I had to use an entire pack of folded paper towels from the bathroom to sop up the mess. It’s a RED slushie, so I also got the soap and scrubbie out and tried my best to work at the stain. On my frickin KNEES. Other reps remark on my cleaning ability and make jokes about what a slob The Spiller is. Spiller returns (with his lunch - nice appointment) when I was in the bathroom cleaning myself up, and no one says anything to him about his mess and how I was the one to take care of it, because, well, it’s gone now. What mess? :rolleyes: :mad:
Does this guy (I’m assuming it’s a guy) have some sort of Ivy League degree which would give him the impression that he’s above such tasks as photocopying?
Complain to the person that you assist. If you can’t assist the person you are supposed because somebody is wasting your time it will probably piss them off.
If that lazy women was on the level to have an assistent then she would have one. She is stealing from your boss and wasting the company time.
It’s a she, and no. She barely registers higher than me in the grand scheme of things in this company.
I am the assistant to one of our VP’s. But, I also assist editors and other members of our team. Usually that’s in the form of copyediting, proofing, etc. And ya know, I really don’t mind doing some copying, but not four pages. If she was in a rush and needed 50 copies, I’d be glad to do it. That’s what I’m here for. But, I’m not here to be her personal servant. She is the only one who does this, and I’m not sure why.
In other news, the dumb bitch just put the same four copies on my desk so that I can fax them for her. This is while I’m on the phone and have a chapter up on my screen that I’m in the middle of editing. Sure, honeypie, I’ll take time out and do your faxing. :rolleyes: Argh. So frustrating.
This confuses me. Is it your job to clean up other people’s messes? If not, why did you? Do they assume you will because you do clean up messes? This sounds to me like people are taking advantage of them because you let them. If the guy didn’t clean up his own mess, why do you feel you should? It’s his mess.
Unless your boss tells you to. Then I really, really feel for you.
Leave those four copies right where she left them. When she asks, explain, more or less politely, what your job really is. Mention the fact that you were doing your job, and just didn’t have time to do something that is not your job. Tell her that if it is that important, she should probably just do it herself instead of taking the chance that you may not have a time when you have nothing better to do.
I’m a support person too. The place I’m working nowadays (temp) there’s a woman–you know the type–who has to be the boss of someone in order to feel whole. I’m supposed to pick up the slack from her and two others, the three partners in a small firm, plus do a buttload of other general stuff. But I spend up to 20 hours a week on her personal shit. I do her bank deposits, because they can’t be bothered to sign up for direct deposit. I even had to drive her daughter to her orthodontist once. What makes it bother me is that she takes it so much for granted. I never get a lunch, unless she’s given me an outside errand; otherwise I never have time for lunch. And no one ever bothers to offer to watch the phone if I want to go to lunch, or anything. But she’s the worst. One time? She was emailing a friend she went to college with? They used to drink nasty cocktails: sex on the beach, whatever. “Lissener, can you search around on the Internet, and find me a picture of the grossest cocktail in the world, so I can attach it to this email?” Once I came in early, and had been here for fourteen hours, helping her with a last-minute proposal (everything’s last minute). I’d been there since 6am, and at about 6pm she insisted that another person, who’d been there since 9am should go home; it was getting late. She never even asked me how I was doing, let alone asked me if I wanted to go home. Then she leaves the office for a few minutes, and comes back with food. For herself. A couple hours later, it’s 830pm, I hadn’t eaten since 11am, and I’d been sitting on my thumbs for a half hour because she hadn’t gotten around to redlining the proposal. So I said, “If I’m gonna be back here at 6am (the proposal was due, across town, at 9am), then I have to leave now. My commute is over an hour each way, which leaves me barely enough time to get in and out of bed. Leave the redlines on my chair and I’ll do them in the morning.” The look I got! A wave of the hand, a “Whatever,” and I left anyway. I get there at 6am, put my bag down, and head for the kitchen for a cup of coffee. She follows me in there. “What are you doing? this has to be out of here by like 830!” *I’m getting a cup of coffee. * An exasperated roll of the eyes, and she goes back to her desk. Guess what? she hadn’t made a pot of coffee. So I put a pot on to brew, go back to my desk, and finish her redlines in ten minutes. I send the file to print and then restart my computer; Word is getting wonky. While it’s printing, and my pooter is rebooting, I go into the kitchen for a cup of coffee. She comes out from her desk and sees me returning from the kitchen with a cup of coffee, sees my screen on “Control Alt Delete,” and immediately assumes that I’ve been dicking around for 10 minutes. So while she’s twitching and trying to express her violent feelings while remaining “professional,” I quietly hand her the printed corrections along with her redlined copy. This of course makes her even madder.
I guess I don’t really have it so bad. I’m not treated like someone’s secretary, no offense, I just mean I don’t run personal errands, etc., and it would be considered extremely unprofessional if the bosses around here expected us to to that.
Dilbert’s Boss: I want you to email this document for me. Fax it too, in case he doesn’t check his email. Then mail the original so he has a clean copy.
I honestly believe it’s probably because she’s of looking like an idiot because she really doesn’t know how to use the copier/fax machine. I have a guy at work who will stand right next to the fax machine with one sheet of paper to fax and hand it to me and ask me to fax it for him. He tries to make out that it’s because it’s too busy but it takes thirty fucking seconds to put the sheet of paper in the machine, dial and press “send”. He’s clearly just stupid. I’m waiting for the right moment to embarress him.
And just how stupid is THAT? What is so hard (or embarrassing) about saying, “Gee, I’ve never used this machine before. Could you show me how to use it?”
All together now, people: What’s the only stupid question?
Goat-felching boss: tdn, what is our bank account number?
tdn: It’s in the rolodex.
GFB: Well look it up for me!
tdn: Found it. There it is.
GFB: (Flabbergasted) Well, write it down!
The same boss once spilled ice cream on his shirt, so he gave it to the receptionist and told her to take it home and wash it. She quit, then got him in a metric assload of trouble with the department of labor because he never paid her time and a half.
I could tell you a million stories about GFB, but here’s my favorite: He decided that he didn’t like driving home every night (in the car paid for with our salaries), so he was staying with the VP. He was, BTW, a strict vegetarian, while VP and wife were hardcore carnivores. For the holidays, he gave the VP’s wife a vegetarian cookbook. His comment about it? “Maybe now she’ll get the hint.”
Temp job; ending next week. Been here six months, but still . . . not gonna burn any bridges.
You know what else she does? She calls me every time she sends me an email, to let me know she sent me an email. And she usually tells me what’s in the email. Plus she puts the red exclamation mark on EVERY SINGLE EMAIL. When she writes, she bolds, underlines, or even en-quotes probably 75% of the text. She doesn’t understand the idea that the more you emphasize, the less is emphasized. And she is ADDICTED to slashes and dashes, and business-speak jargon (current favorite: “visioning”). She can’t use an *and * or or to save her life: “stairs/walls”; “interior/exterior.” In formal business communications. And when I edit this stuff out–which is what I was hired to do–she accepts my changes that improve the flow of her clunky prose, but insists on replacing the slashes; couldn’t possibly say “materials for stairs and walls.” Worst of all, she puts me in the kind of negative mood where I bitch about such insignificant things.
