What
kind of work was a young temp(orary secretary) in NYC in the 1980’s called upon
to do? First of all, we weren’t
office administrators, we were secretaries. And really, I thought clerical work
was terribly easy especially before technology arrived. I generally worked for
Accurate Temporaries, but also did some work for Kelly Girls, I think.
The
hardest thing about temping was dealing with new people, new personalities,
constantly. Some were nice, some not so nice; some were assholes, some were
evil. Regardless, you had to maintain good relationships with them AND remember
names and faces.
With
practice and necessity, I became pretty good at short term name recall and
temporary relationships.
At
work, we had any number of clerical tasks or duties. The main categories: 1. answering
phones/reception; 2. Making phone calls for the bosses; 3. Taking dictation and/or
transcribing taped memos with a Dictaphone; 4. Doing personal errands for the
bosses; 5. Making photocopies on Xerox machines; 6. Sending faxes; 7. Filing; 8. Lastly, perhaps one of my favorite tasks: Typing
drafts from pages of handwritten notes, on a typewriter, usually on IBM
Selectrics -- large, clunky, loud machines that had removable font balls and,
if you were lucky, had white correction strips so you could cover your
mistakes, cleanly and fast.
Let’s
explore each one of the previous clerical/secretarial tasks in more thrilling
detail. . .
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