Wednesday, April 21, 2010

I love when I remember important days

Today is Administrative Professionals' Day (which is like the new, fancier term for "secretary"…which I guess is out of fashion or out of date or something.  I prefer the term "Assistant Extraordinaire", but it's a little long to put on a nameplate). Anyway, I *actually* have to know this because I, believe it or not, have an assistant.


I know!

How the hell did that happen?? When did I become grown up or important enough to rank an assistant??

She's fantastic…and old enough to be my mother. But it works…because she totally takes care of me and my office and all of my oodles of filing. The only reason I can find stuff in my files when people need it? Is because of her. She comes in once a week is all, so it's not like she's at my beck and call…but still!? She's awesome.

Honestly though, the whole assistant thing totally freaked me out when I started this job. I was like, "An assistant? What am I supposed to do with her? I mean, I don't want to tell this person who is old enough to be my mother that she needs to do all of my copying and filing for me!". So then began the quest to figure out how to professionally tell someone that they need to do something for you without sounding like a total ball-busting class-A bitch.

It was hard.

Anybody can boss somebody around, right?

But to do it so that you still like each other at the end of the day? Tough.

We communicated via sticky notes most of the time because I just couldn't deal with the face-to-face bossing of this sweet, wonderful lady. Finally she was all "Look, you don't have to write everything down on sticky notes. Just tell me what you want me to do when I come in and I'll take care of it." And then I was all, "But I don't want to sound like I'm bossing you around". And she was like, "Duh you idiot…that's kind of my job." (Except she didn’t call me an idiot and she never says "duh". But it was totally almost sort of like that.)

AND she brings me candied pecans and almonds every Christmas and never forgets my birthday. I kind of think I want to marry her…except she's already married. Dammit!

Anyway, Happy Day Assistant Extraordinaire! Don't ever leave…because then, I'll have to actually learn how to file and alphabetize things.

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