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I'm one of those God-complex secretaries people complain about. To be fair, when you control every aspect of several peoples' schedules, are the first face the client sees on entering the premises, are directly responsible for what the entire company ingests, breathes, is supplied with and knows, giving you the power to misdirect, agonize, and subtly kill every single employee should your omnipresent mind decide... ahem. It requires a certain kind of mind. You either kind the kind, comfortably commanding mother hen, you get the quietly competent nerd, or you get The Fuhrer. I think I'm too young to be the first on that list. I keep wanting to do this. Instead, I have to tell people that, no, I cannot inconvenience a dozen other folks in order to move your appointment time up half an hour. And wrestle with the mother hen secretary, who has tenure and a crippling phobia of computers, which also makes me the front-line IT nerd. And try to catch up with the (often poor) people who slip through the monthly billing process. And then I go home and torture Sims.
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Apr 21, 2010 23:45
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| # ¿ May 7, 2024 20:49 |
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I am currently searching for a document. The directions I have been given are as follows: "It's on that computer over there. I don't remember the file type - you know, the one with all the little boxes. It has next year's calendar on it but nothing is filled in yet. No one remembers what the file name is. It's REALLY IMPORTANT that we find it!" This is why receptionists sometimes become The Fuhrer. If you expect omniscience, then by all the mad and distant gods, you will get it.
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May 6, 2010 22:53
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Slip Slap posted:you're the boss so if you want us in ball gowns and tap shoes, just say it. I would actually really like a Fancy Friday. I mean, I work the front desk, so a certain level of spiffiness is required in my position, but an excuse to wear pearls and cheap champagne would go a long way towards making work a place I want to go to.
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Nov 3, 2011 03:58
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 "Oh, your job is easy! You just sit behind a desk all day!"I'm going to kill you. It will not be swift. I am going to lash you to a chair. I am going to leave you there for the remainder of your life. I will fill the air with noise and confusion, a private recording of thousands of questions, all directed at you, all needing to be answered right this second. I will deliver to you the boon of one millimeter of slack for every question you answer to my satisfaction. It will be impossible to satisfy me. All food will be taken in your chair. At intervals, randomly determined, one to five people will walk through your space. They will converse idly with you. If you do not answer their inanities in a polite and respectful manner, your bindings will be tightened. Enjoy your work. (Reception, folks: combining the 'best' of corporate bullshit and public relations, with the brilliant upside of no hope for advancement. Most days, I'm okay - some, I am run so ragged that one stupid loving comment ruins me. This is one of those jobs where, if you perform admirably, well above and beyond the call, no one notices... but one mistake and you're a liability. Please remember to get your local receptionist a card on her birthday. You might make her cry.) Umbilical Lotus fucked around with this message at 01:18 on Feb 24, 2012 |
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Feb 24, 2012 01:15
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Crowley posted:Everyone in corporate worth their salt knows that receptionists are the core of the company. Good receptionists solves far more problems than anyone else in the company, knows more than anyone else in the company, and even has to keep a calm face in the worst of times when everyone else logs out of their phones to avoid external contact when something goes wrong.  Thanks, that makes me feel better. It's been one of those days where the level of effort so vastly outweighs the level of recognition that I start wondering where I can do shots at lunch. Except I don't get a lunch hour, because if I leave the desk for fifteen minutes I come back to a snarl of messages, customers, and employees who all have issues they needed me to deal with fifteen minutes ago. Recognition for work well done is a rare bird in the corporate world as it is, but reception is one of those jobs that, the better you are at it, the less likely you are to ever move on, be promoted, or get noticed at all. That is, until you quit, and your replacement has to hastily learn the mythic labyrinth of scheduling that you have already grown accustomed to, while under the daily pressures you've come to view as normal. I'm going for a smoke break. I don't smoke anymore.
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Feb 24, 2012 02:21
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| # ¿ May 7, 2024 20:49 |
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I'm sick and can't take a day off because no one can do the stuff I do. Why did I agree to a schedule that makes it impossible to ever be sick on a Thursday? All I want to do is fall asleep in the grass.
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Apr 19, 2012 20:28
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