“Halal. Is that where the animal has to be alive before they kill it?” (me)
“And tell me, did you survive this accident” (some tv news interviewer)
I was thinking along the lines of a class thing too.
I used to work with a manager from a very upper class family in Taipei. In four years she never made a copy or sent a fax. She would always give it to the secretary of the IT Director. It wasn’t our secretary, mind you. But she always got that manager’s work. (Oh, and the copy machine was 5 feet outside our office door and she had to walk by the fax machine to get to the secretary’s desk!)
The administrative assistant for one of the small, cross-departmental programs at my university quit recently. A key reason for this was the academic who is in charge of the program. Apart from being overbearing and suffering from horrible mood swings, the academic is completely lazy and unwilling to do any work herself.
Perhaps the most telling aspect of her style is that she doesn’t even write her own emails. Instead of sending an email that said:
she would wait until the admin assistant got back from lunch, or interrupt the AA’s work, and say
Now, i may not be right up to speed regarding what constitutes the duties of an admin assistant, but i thought that one of the primary benefits of email was that people could quickly and easily take care of small crap like this themselves, and leave the admin assistant to do her job.
I’m not sure if it’s the same in companies, but in the university the admin assistants are the people who keep the place running. They organize meetings and seminars, coordinate resources, and generally stay one step ahead of the (often-befuddled) academics. They are not simply glorified note-takers.
God forbid that the houses of these people should catch on fire. You guys will be getting a phone call in the middle of the night to get the fire department.
My boss lady stops at my desk on her way out and says, “Send an email, from me, and tell Client X we need to discuss the direction he wants to go in with his buildout. Make it cute and personal; he’s an old friend.” I do so, and sign it “Regards, Bosslady.” She’s furious: she *never * signs her emails “regards!”
At least we know you don’t work for Shodan!
Salaam,
Bosslady
:dubious:
I believe under the Geneva Conventions she has now forfeited her right not to be ground up and made into a tostada.
How do you use this fax machine? 
::sigh ::
OK, you jokers: it’s THE ONE YOU DON’T ASK!! :smack: 
I imagine croquettes are more popular in Geneva
Ugh. In my old temp job, my coworker used to ask me to get things from the printer and hand them to her. As in–we were both seated at our desks working. She would interrupt me to ask me to stop what I was doing, get up from my chair, and walk 5 feet to the printer, grab the papers, walk the 5 feet over to her desk, hand it to her, and then sit down and resume my own work.
No, she had no mobility issues. She was just criminally lazy.
Sounds like MY old, soon to be again, boss. Only it wasn’t him that decided that, we really did have clients for whom that sort of service was necessary. They, the clients, were the military. Seriously.
Good god people, I can’t believe some of the shit your bosses pull!
I vow to never again complain when my boss asks me to give her something 3 different times (because she “misplaced” the prior two copies I gave her).
Asking people to send emails and faxes? What the hell? I can understand if they’re rushing out the door and remember at the last minute a crazy important email has to be sent to someone, but searching the internet for pictures of gross cocktails? Emailing friends to set up lunch dates? Sounds more like these dingbat bosses need to feel “important” and can only manage to do so by reminding themselves that they have someone to do such simple, minimal tasks for them.
That’s just sad.
When we could actually afford for me to have an assistant back in the good 'ol days, my lucky assistant ended up having hardly anything to do because most things I’d give her, I’d end up taking longer to explain how to do it than if I’d just do it myself. So I’d just do it myself. Eventually, we both started to wonder why I even had an assistant. I would always rather let her take off early (she was salaried) than keep her there doing everything short of wiping my ass. That’s just stupid, not to mention insulting to her.
Here’s to hoping karma will kick all their asses, buncha lazy bitches.
You know, there are a certain number of people who abuse those at the bottom of the totem pole. Usually this is the lowest ranked admin or the receptionist. It’s worse if there’s only one admin.
And when you get a boss like this, sure you think it’s wrong. But in a small company, there is NO ONE to complain to. No dedicated HR staff, no bevy of other managers you might be transfered to. And yeah, so it’s not it your written contract. But no one hires an admin without including a line about projects/tasks as directed. It’s just impossible to fully detail the job duties. And while it sounds easy to say, “Who puts up with this shit?”, but there are a lot of us out there without spouses to fall back on and about two paychecks from insolvency. You worry about references and taking a chance in a shifting economy. You worry about something going wrong during the gap in your health insurance. It’s easy to talk about, but quitting a job on principle scary thing to do.
I don’t mean to be bitchy. I just quit a job working for the boss from hell. But I got tired of people basically telling me it was my fault I was treated like a servant. In the end, standing up to Dragon Lady only made the situation so much worse. The American workplace is not a democracy.
(As an aside, I’ve also had my boss send me emails-- usually bearing unpleasant tidings-- with the full text in quotes, and a note: ‘please send below in an email to the so-and-so.’ She sent me an email to tell me to send an email to someone else. She’d get pissed if the email mentioned her name or if I altered the text in any way. I was supposed to pretend I’d written it. What really sucked is her grammar and spelling were horrible and riddled with netspeak. It was embarassing and usually confused the hell out of the recipient.)
"When the fax machine sends the paper through the power lines, does it fold it, or roll it into a little tube?
ok, ok, I knew what you meant. But really, handing Dopers a set-up line like that, what did you expect?
Well, I’ve been having a tough week myself. My job title is ‘Supervisor’ and I have about 20 employees that I supervise, but it doesn’t seem to mean much when ‘visitors’ from head office show up. Evidently because I am in the field I have brain damage, or something. “Yeah, Lady. I know they sent you out to ‘help’ with this project and this is the way you did it back in head office, but have you noticed that we are in the middle of the fucking desert in Yemen? Did you notice that Starbucks, Office depot, or Staples isn’t down the block? Did you bloody well notice that there are no fucking blocks even?! And did you really think that if we did this project, as done in North America, by giving a 3 page checklist to a bunch of Yemeni Nationals whose English skills can be only kindly listed as a ‘second language’ is really going to accomplish anything other than piss them off. So maybe you should shut the fuck up and let me do my job and get this project finished sometime this decade!”
So, I have started an initiative that will probably get me terminated eventually, but at this point I could care less. Anyhoo, I call it the ‘Dancing Frog’. I printed this out and added to the bottom, “Typical Visitor from Head Office”. Notice the small brain pan and the large mouth? Imagine, if you will, this creature dancing into the conference room with the latest ‘Initiative of the week’ (I’m thinking of creating a t-shirt with some Velcro on it so it is easy to change the slogans such as ‘I survived weekly initiative 495!’) and then dancing out again with a tip of his hat after dumping another shit load of work on you that has nothing to do with what your job function is. It has taken off like wildfire here. Even the nationals understand it. One of my employees almost pissed his pants when he saw it and named one of the people it represents. Lol!
Michigan J Frog
As an HR Manager, I feel I should pipe in here…and this is probably going to be a slightly unpopular opinion, but, well…most of the opinions I make that are HR related are unpopular… 
You say you “assist editors and other members of our TEAM.” If Non-Copy Making gal is part of said team, well, it seems to me that it is part of your job description and you’re S.O.L. I’m not quite sure what the difference if between making 4 copies or 50 for someone that asks for help–sure, the constant interruptions are annoying, but it sounds to me that because this woman isn’t an “important” type (VP, CEO, whatever) it is above you to make copies for her–unless I am misunderstanding what the real issues are in your working environment.
As I said before, if she is part of that team, you are S.O.L. If she is, however coming from a totally different department (say from Accounting to Editing) to have you make copies, then that’s a different story…than you should speak to YOUR direct supervisor and see if something can be done about the constant interruption.
Granted, Admin-ing is shitty (been there, done that) but it really is a position where you are a SUPPORT person. Unfortunately, sometimes that merits supporting people that will drive us to drink. Hang in there! 
God, I’m LMAO at these stupid idiots! (I’m an admin, too.) What a bunch of dorks.
Anyhoo… Indygrrl, I suggest “time management” techniques as a way to deal with this woman. Sure, I’m happy to make those four copies for you. I can get to it this afternoon at 4:00. Oh, you need them now? Okay, well let’s go to my boss’s office and see if he’ll let me adjust my priorities for your project.
I always let people know that I can do what they need me to do, but I have a schedule and a priority list, and let them know when and where in that priority list their project would go. Almost always, they did it themselves. Being clear that you’re “open and willing” to do this little dumb-ass project of their’s is the key.
I also let my boss know in advance that I was sometimes asked to do things for other departments, and that if a time conflict couldn’t be worked out, it was up to him and this other department to work it out. Believe me, people would rather do their project themselves then have to ask the SVP if they could use his assistant to stuff envelopes…
Necros and Obsidian:
Ok, no. Cleaning up spills is not in my JOB DESCRIPTION. However, I do work in an office, not on a factory floor. Something is spilled on a carpeted office floor, something that is wet, sticky and will stain like the dickens. And these “gentlemen” are so oblivious that they’d just trudge through the mess tracking it everywhere instead of mentioning to the appropriate person that there is a spill - let alone them actually picking up a towel. I mean, its a RED slushie. The stain is going to be horrid, like a murder scene. That’s exactly what you want potential customers to see, right? They can’t think past their own noses. Would they do this at home?
I didnt have to clean it. Yes, it was my CHOICE to do so. We’re a small company, I am Sales Admin Receptionist AND the HR Director all rolled into one. What I’m bitching about is the audacity some people have that they would drop something and not deem themselves worthy to pick it up.
But the fact remains that, whether making copies for that person is in the job description or not, the function of the assistant is to make things run more efficiently.
Kind of defeats the purpose of an assistant when walking to the assistant’s desk and asking them to make four copies actually takes longer than making four copies yourself.