Kerrie Solsberg McLoughlin http://www.thekerrieshow.com 2m 516
The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.
Let me start by saying that my head was not in this job as an administrative assistant. I’m too much of a be-your-own boss hippie chick to have been working for the head of an international public relations firm, but we all need to make money when we’re young and dumb, right?
In addition to working for the head of the place (I was one of two assistants and the junior of the two), I also had two other people I worked for. I found myself proofreading crappy writing by people who were just kind of assholes in general and had no clue that I could write better than they could and that I made them look good by correcting their errors. At that time in the company, however, it was a policy that office staff like secretaries could not be promoted to public relations associate positions, no matter what their rockin’ skills, experience or education.
As far as working fo the Head Boss Lady goes, she required a daily tuna sandwich from a specific place, no onions or I had to take it back and give the restaurant staff a good yelling at for messing up. All I could think of at the time was of all the hungry people in the world and how happy I would be to snarf down a $5 tuna salad sandwich every day that someone delivered to me like a queen.
Once she tried to teach me how to be a hardass and hop the case of someone from Housekeeping. The worker was cleaning up some broken glass that a client had made happen in a conference room. I thought the worker was doing fine, and I was going to leave her alone to do her job, but my boss apparently had nothing better to do and stood over both of us to get on my case so I would get on the case of the Housekeeping worker. I felt so torn … I worked for Boss Lady and wanted to keep my job but knew it was not kind to treat someone how I was expected to treat Housekeeping personnel.
I felt like my butt was clenched up all day, every day, and I thank God all the time that I was let go with no reason with a nice one-month severance package to never ask why they fired me. Now that I work for myself (see my confession called The Homeschooling Mommybot), I feel FREE and happier than I have ever been. God bless the secretaries and administrative assistants and virtual assistants all over the world: they put up with a lot of shit and don’t make enough money to do so.
I understand that people in her position have worked hard to get where they are. They deserve to have an assistant, and that assistant should strive to do everything she/he can to make the boss’s life easier. But respect is earned, and just because you are “above” someone on the professional ladder does not mean you have to be a condescending jerk.
(
