The first time I read that story, I laughed and laughed. I just read it again and laughed and laughed.
Er, sorry about your assistant. It’s probably not much consolation that stories about her bring such joy to others.
still giggling … thanks jsgoddess - I’d missed the payday thread!
Thanks for the responses, folks. As I said, I’ve been an admin assistant, but I was the type YaWanna and gigi described. In fact, the first bit of programming I got paid to do started when I was working as a receptionist and translator. Before long, programming was part of my job.
My department’s going to be shorthanded soon, and, while I am happy to help out and I have done a bit of fancy formatting for our customer service reps when things are slow, I need a better sense of where to draw the line, allowing for what the person I’m dealing with is capable of and what other factors are involved.
Your boss seriously needs to back away from the crack pipe. Jesus! Maybe he’s sleeping with her!
This has been mentioned several times in this thread, but it bears repeating. I think the most important skill for an admin (or any computer user, really) is the ability to learn. The ability (and the confidence – I think confidence is one of the most important factors here) to experiment, press F1, search Google, or do whatever, in order to work out how to solve a particular problem. I don’t necessarily expect someone who has never had to use a section break to know all about them. But any reasonably competent computer user should be able to find out about them by themselves.
Ability to learn, definitely. Ability to put up with people who haven’t found the coffeepot yet is good too 
Ability to look at the bunch of engineers dressed in jeans and shirts who just appeared in the 9th floor asking for the meeting room (it was the only one available) like they’re engineers working for your company and not homeless vagrants is a big, big plus.
Computer literacy should be a requirement for everybody whose job won’t be done standing in front of a metal press. Actually, I’ve met just-out-of-college doctors who knew less about computers than the metal-press guys…
matt_mcl: agreed that a secretary doesn’t have to be able to translate; if you want one that can, you should specify that. But I don’t have a degree as a translator and I do a much better job than a certified translator - and unlike most degreed translators, I’m able to say “nope, sorry, I don’t do contracts; tech or general only”.
A good AA is an angel.
You’re right. It’s not in the job description. I still get asked to do stuff like that all the time.
Keep in mind, there are different levels of “admin support” or “secretary”. There are, indeed, those that are primarially receptionists i.e. answer phones all day with little other responsibility. Then there are folks like me, who would be more properly described as a jack of all trades.
The section break/changing headers function on Word is not intuitive to the vast majority of people. If you have never used it, or seldom used it, I can see having trouble with it. On the other hand, XP level Word’s help function will usually get you pointed in the right direction. Usually.
In addition to being about to troubleshoot jammed copiers, a good admin needs to know when to say “this is beyond my ability” and either get help or turn it over to a professional.
That said, my computer information can be surprisingly spotty. I was recently asked to get the memory and speed information out of my CPU and had to ask for help to do it. The tech who helped me expressed great surprise at the question, since normally I am very computer savvy (in fact, they ask me to help them with Word and PowerPoint questions they can’t answer). I pointed out that I’d never had to look that up before and, given my time frame, it seemed a better idea to ask and get a quick answer than to spend an hour figuring it out myself.