Work Irritations

Irritation No. 1: Lazy Executive Assistants….more on these office phenoms...

Got an email today from one of the L.A.E.s on the 2nd floor…she's EA to the president of one of our divisions. She's never set up in the downstairs conference rooms before so she wanted either I or my supervisor to set up her 20-person meeting on Friday FOR HER. Entirely. Completely. What a load of crap. Of course, my supervisor was all like, oh sure! We'll take care it. Happy to help! Slap me across the other cheek now!

Thank God she decided to take advantage of another 'servant' admin in her own department rather than deputizing my supervisor and I as her servants.

You may get the impression from reading this (like anyone reads this) that I am generally an irritable person at work, or one of those people that wouldn't throw water on a burning person's flesh if it isn't in my job description. Wrong-o. I just detest people who simply don't wish to do something so they delegate it onto other people…like the EA in question. She wants someone else, who has their own job to do, to set up a TWENTY PERSON MEETING for her only because she's never worked in those conference rooms before? PLEASE. All you do is make coffee, put out the ice, water, and pop, mugs and glasses, cream and sugar and let the guests have at it. It's not anywhere near being difficult. That's it. My God, it's just a conference room lady! Face your fear!!!!!

Anyway, I just politely said yes, of course we'll do it, and you might want to tag along so you can learn about that conference room and how everything works…but then I discovered she had deputized another poor schlep in her own department to do her work for her. : )

Irritation No. 2: People I Support Who Act Like Jerks…

So one of the Directors I support…we'll call her SeaBee…is in a snit today.

Because she is a flake, I recently set up rules in Outlook to collect her emails and put copies of them in a folder with her name on it so that when she's being flaky (ie…she can't remember if she sent me an email to do something for her or not and she wants me to instantaneously know whether I did it or not).

She sent me an email on Thursday to have me send out a couple of ABXs.  I had set the rule in Outlook up wrong, so instead of it moving a COPY, it just moved the whole thing and I didn't see it until today. Oh dear. So I had to do damage control. I told her I didn't get the email until today. True, but not entirely true.

Yes, I did screw up, but I hardly ever screw this person's work up, and do you know why? Because her personality is incredibly volatile. If you screw up her work, she might flip on you OR give you that look…the one that says…"You are an idiot and I'm going to try to get you fired asap because I act without thinking about these things because secretaries are an easy target for me to sh*t on."

Anyway, she emailed me back and copied my supervisor…as though I am someone who constantly screws up…"Seeeeeeee? She screws up all the time!" And she said, "how can that be? Can't have this".  Ok, can I scream at you now???????? Not the first time she's done this. I'm going to have to talk to my supervisor.

Well, regardless of these irritations, I will survive. :)