On Thursday morning, my 3-levels-up-boss came into our department asking if we had a scanner. Well, no, we don’t. But I offered to help out with my digital camera, which I happened to have with me. I took pictures of the pictures he had. (Not the easiest way to get a digital copy, but it works.) He was happy with that. So about 15 minutes later, he came looking for me in a panic. The following conversation ensued, with my thoughts unspoken in parentheses:
Boss: Some of these pictures came out sideways!
Me: Yes, I shot them the way they fit best. (ya dumb freakin’ idiot)They can be fixed pretty easily.
Boss: How?
Me: All you have to do is open them in Microsoft Photo Editor, rotate them, then save them again. (for cryin’ out loud.)
Boss: That’s great! That’s just wonderful. Do you need the disk back?
Me: No, that’s not my personal disk, I don’t really need it back.
Boss: I meant, to save the images back onto.
Me: Oh, I get what you mean. (OH, YOU MEAN YOU WANT ME TO DO IT!!!) Of course, let me have it. I’ll get it back to you in a few minutes. (you incredibly moronic person who is the head of the entire technology operations department…(and so on and so on))
Obviously it’s been a long time since his tech days…he’s all management now…completely lost frickin’ touch… I told this to his admin and she laughed histerically…She said he wouldn’t have a clue how to do that. :rolleyes:
Could be worse, you could be the boss Admin. Asst. and get to field great calls from bimbos so dammned dumb, they put your job down on their resume, and then when you take the phone call someone makes to verify that she did work here for the past 3 years, somehow resist the urge to call the bitch and say look, hon you may be boning him, but what are you going to do if the wrong person answers the phone?
Jeesh. Mistresses aren’t as smart as they used to be.
Interesting thread; I’m an AA at Hewlett-Packard, which is a position I never thought I’d have. I work in an R&D Lab, supporting a section manager and 50 people directly, and the rest of the lab indirectly as part of a 5 person admin team. It’s a pretty cool job.
I took all my ‘in between the cracks’ skills from the military and put them to use there. Having been a manager makes it easier to deal with managers, but I gotta tell you, engineers are a breed unto themselves! LOL!
To a 2-L jacketed round reactor vessel (reactor #1) with an
overall heat transfer coefficient of about 100 Btu/F-ft2-hr, add
ingredients one, two and three with constant agitation.
In a second 2-L reactor vessel with a radial flow impeller
operating at 100 rpm, add ingredients four, five, six, and seven
until the mixture is homogenous.
To reactor #2, add ingredient eight, followed by three equal
volumes of the homogenous mixture in reactor #1.
Additionally, add ingredient nine and ten slowly, with constant
agitation. Care must be taken at this point in the reaction to
control any temperature rise that may be the result of an
exothermic reaction.
Using a screw extrude attached to a #4 nodulizer, place the
mixture piece-meal on a 316SS sheet (300 x 600 mm).
Heat in a 460K oven for a period of time that is in agreement
with Frank &Johnston’s first order rate expression (see JACOS,
21, 55), or until golden brown.
Once the reaction is complete, place the sheet on a 25C heat-
transfer table, allowing the product to come to equilibrium.
I work as a paralegal in a small firm, thus I have all the aa duties as well as what I went to school for. My boss is brillant but lost on most of the most mundane computer knowledge, basically a computer is nothing more than a word processor to him.
When I started working for him the office computer was an ancient 486SX33 running win3.1, 4mb Ram, 256mb HD, and a 14.4 external modem. he just couldn’t understand why he couldn’t get online very well, or why the lastest software wouldn’t work on it. (btw, this was approx. 6 months ago)
The boss’s admin told me that in her experience, the ones who say they don’t need to be babysat are the ones that need it most. I have GREAT respect for admins, because they are expected to have such a wide variety of skills these days. The days when all they had to do is type letters and answer phones has been over for a really long time. The thing that makes my story so pathetic, is that we are a TECH OPERATIONS department, so he ought to have some skills…I’m sure he did at one time…so what the hell happened to him?
When I was a secretary, I called myself a secretary, mangeorge, but in a lot of companies they’re actually different jobs.
Of course, another reason to call oneself an “administrative assistant” is in the dim hopes of heading off halfwits like the one who said to me, after I told her I was a secretary, “Oh. Well, what did you want to be?”
I’m not an AA, I’m an intern. I do think they have to be saints though, I know ours is. I work in a lab, okay. My boss is a good guy. Cares about his people and his company. Fair, and demanding enough to be a challenge but not a slave driver. He came to our AA the other day (I was making copies) saying he had lost his start. He had cold rebooted the machine three times and it hadn’t come back. She wasn’t fazed a bit. Just walked to his office to take care of it. Knew exactly what it was. He has the same problem every few months.
You know how you can drag the task bar down so it’s hidden? yea, just that. At the end of my assignment i’m going to re-dock his taskbar at the top of his screen and leave. I love the guy, but there is a basic level of competence that should be reached.
He’s the one with the fancy Windows NT machine, the computer for the lab techs, who can program in four languages and need a useable machine, is barely able to run Windows 3.1. Sigh.
Oh, we are HUGE Dilbert fans around here. I’m always posting a cartoon that I hope the PHB won’t realize is about him, or if he does, that he doesn’t know I posted it…
When I was a lowly intern (yes, that was my job title - lowly intern), when the receptionist had lunch I would work the switchboard. I loved that job, and I was looking for secretariat jobs this summer (I stopped looking when I got the translating gig).
I’d just like to share a rejoinder I heard; if anyone ever refers to you as “just a secretary”, smile sweetly and say, “No, no. I used to be just-a-secretary, but now I’m a full secretary.”
If the working world were an ecosystem, secretaries, like teachers, nurses, and garbage men, would be the insects: considered insignificant, but if they vanished everything would instantly disintegrate. However, if certain upper management personnel were to vanish, several days could pass before anyone would notice.
