So,
other than answering the assistant’s phone on their desk outside the boss’s
door in the course of a day and sometimes making all kinds of personal calls
for the boss, the killer thing would be: setting up meetings.
On the days where I
had to set up meetings and it didn’t go well I would NOT laugh, inwardly, that
they paid me to work. . . and I’d wonder why anybody would want to work full
time, permanently, in an office. Ugh.
Because
this was the pre-email environment, setting up meetings for me meant taking a
deep breath (even though I’m quite good, even sometimes brilliant at it, I have
a slight phone phobia) and dialing the extensions.
“Hello,
Mr. Whoosit’s office? I’m filling in for Mr. Dutcher’s secretary and he was wondering
about setting up a meeting with Mr. Whoosit on August 17? (pause) Oh. Mr.
Whoosit’s out of town then. Well, let me get back to you with some other dates.
Thank you.”
This
kind of thing would happen many times, the invitee not being available and a
lot of back and forth, phoning. Aaargh!
Until I
got the hang of it, coordinating meeting dates and times was a killer. You had
to have multiple possibilities in order to nail one date and time down, and
then consider the seniority of the invitees and prioritize. You had to have an
org chart for that because usually the boss was too busy to ask. And usually at
some point in the process when you reported back to the boss about who was in
and who couldn’t come, you’d be yelled at, anyway.
When
you finally made all the calls and nailed down the attendees, then you had to
find a room for the meeting. I’d rely on other “office gals” for help, regular
employees who knew the ropes and rooms.
Setting
up meetings was never fun, always work, always stressful. Later on, with
computers and emailing, it got better, but still. . . I found that experience
useful when I had to set up band rehearsal schedules, or plan a big family
gathering.
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