Whether it’s a stellar employee who knew the boss’s schedule better than s/he does, or a totally clueless employee with delusions of power…share some of your stories of invaluable/unvaluable admin assistants!
She doesn’t work in my department, but I’ve heard her on the phone, taking advantage of hotel rates by booking a year in advance, then browbeating the hotel clerk when they “lost” the reservation, despite the fact that she has the confirmation number. She’s in charge of catering meetings, crunching numbers, and is not shy about telling her boss when he’s wrong.
On the flip side, we had a receptionist take a confidential fax (granted, it was a public fax, but she knew to bring it directly to the manager), make copies, and distribute it to the rest of the employees. This was a proposed new organizational chart, and quite a few people were upset to find they were not on the chart at all.
You can have my Debbie when you pry her from my cold, dead hands.
She knows where everything is, how much everything costs, who’s who, who needs special attention and who can be pawned off, when I’m in and when I’m not (even if I am), how much everyone makes, when I need to answer the call and when I can let it go to voice-mail, etc. etc. etc.
The kind of support she provides is absolutely invaluable, and I make sure she’s well compensated and kept very, very happy.
I AM the amazing admin, if I do say so. My main talent is a really great memory for names and situations. We are a counseling office and my boss knows she can use me as a virtual database for our clients.
Typical of my mad skillz: “Oh, yeah, he graduated in '04. His mom came the last week of his sophomore year and waited for you in the chair in that corner when we had a chair in that corner. She was crying because he hadn’t finished his work for the semester and was planning on helping him.” Then I went to the archives, stuck my hand a drawer and pulled out the right file.
I can also figure out names based on my memory of where they were filed in the filing cabinet. “Oh, yeah, top drawer, right column, L through N. LAWRENCE!”
Plus, I’m pretty good at getting the boss to be more tactful. “Ask them what it is you can do that they can’t. Don’t tell them to do it themselves.”
I had a Director once who, when he went to a new place, introduced himself to the Admins before visiting the person he was supposed to visit. A bit later he got promoted to manager of our Denver factory. When I went to visit him, I decided to take a page from his book, and introduced myself to his Admin. It started snowing, and before I left she thought to book a room for me at a hotel near Stapledon. I’ve always been grateful to her, since that is why I didn’t sleep on a bench at the airport that night.
One of the pieces of advice my son got when he went off to the college was to be polite and respectful to the secretaries. It worked…he got a plum work internship job, normally reserved for seniors.
The first one is the good one. Basically, she booked rooms a year in advance to take advantage of the rates, and the hotel “lost” the reservations, even though the AA had the confirmation number. The rooms were booked because it was near a scheduled popular sports event, and they were booked a year in advance because she knew that closer to the event, it wouldn’t be possible to get hotel rooms.
So, she went to bat for our company with a hotel that either lost the reservations or didn’t want the rooms to go for such a cheap rate.
One of most valuable things I took away from Journalism school (even though I didn’t become a journalist) is to always treat the admin assistants with dignity and respect, and doors will always open for you. You might not even need to get those doors open - the secretary probably can tell you everything you need to know.
When I was having trouble with my new home and a lien (not my fault!) the only person who could help me was the county prosecutor. Well, actually, the prosecutor’s secretary. I spoke with her several times and she was the bomb, and helped me avoid heaps of trouble. My “journalistic” method of getting things done via secretary did the trick.
My wife is an Admin Three (Administrative Assistant, Step Three) which is the highest rank she can attain under the State of Colorado Classified Staff system. She’s the AA to the Vice President of Student Services at the local junior college and is better paid than two-thirds of the faculty. If I were to go to work teaching for the same college at the top of my salary range, given my experience and education, she’d still make several thousand dollars a year more than I would. That’s right, I’m a kept man.
But here’s my favorite “secretary” story:
Many years ago (late 1960s) I was a part-time reporter and full-time booth announcer for a small TV station. At Christmas time, we were instructed to hand in to the boss’ secretary a list of the people we wanted to send Christmas cards to. I dutifully submitted my list of three or four important sources I’d managed to cultivate. I noticed that the sports director’s list included all of the high school and college coaches in the area, the other reporter’s list included lots of familiar names of movers and shakers in the community. But the news director’s list was all women whose names I didn’t recognize. So I asked him about it. No mystery, he replied; “This is the mayor’s secretary, this is the police chief’s secretary, this is the school superintendent’s secretary…” But why, I asked, would he be sending such nice cards to secretary? He looked at me in utter disdain. “Who the hell do you think gives me access to the mayor, the police chief and the school superindendent?” It was one of the best journalism lessons I ever learned.
Several years ago, my direct boss left the company. As an interim solution I reported to the Vice President’s admin.
Best boss I ever had. She could look at a problem, and make a logical decision, and stick to it.
Lisa rocks. If she had still been my boss I would not have taken early retirement.
My division’s program assistant, like Sunrazor’s wife (and wow, in the same system!), probably makes more than I do as Department Chair, and earns every nickel and then some. She manages to keep 40+ faculty members, most of whom are relatively intelligent in their fields (and some of whom are brilliant in their fields), but awful in everything else, from going off the rails. She reminds us of nitpicky things that nevertheless would create havoc for our adjunct faculty and students. She provides support for never-ending reams of administrative crap that continuously breeds and multiplies like tribbles. She puts up with our tantrums of frustration when we simply cannot fathom why the system (or the administrators) are placing yet another level of bureaucracy and another set of forms in our way.
And she does it all with a smile, and a capacity to joke, and unflappable calm in the midst of a storm.
In my last duty position I had two that were outstanding. The first was CPL Thompson. He always knew, from my scribbled notes what had to be done and what could be let slide. He could find a way to get things done that I would never have thought of and made sure that I could answer update my superiors on the status of any project that was in the works. He raised Hell if he or his Soldiers were being mistreated, but made sure that the mission was accomplished first.
The next was CPL McCullough. She was Radar O’Reilly, Jennifer Marlow, and Denis Finch all rolled into one. She handled my day to day so well, I could practice fly fishing in my office if the mood struck me. She accepted my orders, parsed them and got the job done.
Now I am an AA to my Station Commander and I have a feel for what I put them through. Thank, Og, I had good junior leaders to show me how to be a AA.
I guess I should have included more props for Razorette in my previous post. It is sort of urban legend-ish around college campuses that there is some astronomical number of highly qualified applicants for every faculty and administration position that comes open, but only one or two qualified applicants for the AA positions. The joke is that it’s not that there aren’t people who want those jobs, but the standards for AA are higher! I’ve watched my wife work on occasion (even helped her at semester end once or twice) and her decision-making and organizational skills are phenomenal.
I also know the havoc a bad AA can wreak. My youngest brother, who was once a sheriff’s deputy, still has nightmares about the drug busts he participated in that were all dismissed because of botched filing in the criminal records office.
