I want to fire my admin assistant

That’s probably what she gets off on. Of course it doesn’t work because while I can quite easily open her document and hit “print”, I just email her and say it’s in her tray in my office. She can come and get it herself, the lazy git.

I guess you don’t have networked printers? Would be much better to press print and have it come out on her own desk!

mssmith537, could you take the documentation of these faults to HR yourself? Or must you go through whoever she reports to?

We do have networked printers, but I’m not on her network and she’s not on mine. I may have to ask the nice people in IT Services to sort that out for me then I can print all my stuff on her machine and insist she brings it upstairs for me.

Can your AA fold paper? Mine can’t. Seriously.
I have a very part-time new job, and my AA was hired by my supervisors. She started work before I did, so she hasn’t really had enough tasks to keep busy. She was assigned to stuff and stamp a stack of envelopes. She couldn’t do it. Turns out she has serious physical issues that basically prevent her from doing ANY physically-oriented office tasks. Oh great. Just what I need! An AA who can’t actually do anything. She will get fired, it’s just going to be awhile. Urgh. As I’m there all of 7 hours a week, my AA is supposed to be the person who actually does all the work, she was hired specifically for this reason!

Maybe msmith537’s AA and mine should get together. They can get drunk and do nothing!

See, good AAs are worth their weight in gold. Bad ones are worth their weight in unprocessed sewage.

Since I’m currently earning my living as a legal assistant (which, in my case at least, is an AA who gets added bonus tasks such as legal research and drafting as well as docketing, client billing and assorted other tasks), I can tell you it’s one of my small pleasures in life to be the AA after a bad AA.

Even if I weren’t amazingly good at my job, there’s nothing quite like following after a crappy AA to make me look like the best thing since sliced bread.

My predecessor was an unrepentant drunk (as in, she frequently came to work sloshed, topped off at liquid lunch), immensely disorganized, frequently late (or totally absent), sloppy, and generally a huge mess. I do not suffer in comparison.

My darling Marcie is a superb AA and wants to relocate. Where ya at and watcha pay?

A lot of my classmates are at big firms and I used to wonder about how they couldn’t do the simplest copying and assorted admin jobs for themselves (if I walked over to my secretary’s desk and asked her to make 5 copies of something she’d beat me)…but they claim the partners yell at them if they waste any billing time on admin jobs.

I haven’t done AA work in a long time however I was pretty good when I did.

It’s not that difficult a job if you are organized; prompt; discreet; disciplined; have initiative and good clerical skills.

I gather she’s missing a few of these skills?

Since our AA left to go to another department, I find myself doing a LOT of the stuff she used to do. Dammit. I’m not talking about making a few copies, either. I’ve always done small stuff myself. If they don’t hurry up and post the replacement job, I’m gonna go nuclear.

Apparently all that happens at the level above mine. Fortunately my boss has the same disdain for laziness and willfull incompetence that I do and most of the other management feels the same way I do. We’ll see what happens.