Monday, November 27, 2006

Bosses Are All Fickleminded

Being a secretary means you have to put your boss’s wellbeing ahead of anyone else, including your own.

Bosses are all known to be fickleminded, no question about that. Its just the degree of ficklemindedness that differs from boss to boss, and how well they can take ‘no’ for an answer.

I think if all secretaries/PAs come together and write a book on how fickleminded a boss can be, the list will go on and on and on ahahaha.

Well, here is mine (to be fair to other bosses, because they might be better now, I shall just base it on my current boss):

1. The top on the list will definitely be - flight booking. Boss can never make up her mind which flight she wants to take. You will have to book at least 3 different flights for her all on the same day, going by different routes, to the same destination. Then she will decide how they want to travel. And she ‘decides’ does not mean tat there will be no further changes made anymore. She can suddenly decide to go somewhere else, or suddenly prefer to go by yet another route one hour later. She thinks that every airline will reserve one seat on every flight for her specially, so she can decide now where and how she wants to fly, and get the seat confirmation.
2. She cannot decide how she wants her filing to be done. One minute, she wants 3 copies to be printed, and filed in 3 different places. The next, she complains that there are too many copies floating around, and she feels confused, and wants just one final copy of the document. She has no f@%#king idea how long it takes to make 3 copies of the same document and file them in 3 places, nor does she know how tedious it is to retrieve all 3 copies of the document and consolidate it to one file.
3. This is filing related too. My boss has lots of magazine holders of documents. After shifting to a new office, which is relatively smaller then her previous office, she finds that she should make full use of space and put everything into one magazine holder wherever possible. But after 1 week, she was looking for something, and she called me into the room and scolded me for putting 2 different things into 1 magazine holder. I looked at her in bewilderment. She had personally put the things in herself. I DID NOT TOUCH ANYTHING AT ALL. But she had clearly forgotten about it.
4. My boss, being high up there, has lots of entertainment to do. And being entertainment for the company, of course she will make the expenses incurred for such events. My boss, being her, can seldom decide on the spot how she wants to claim those expenses. Sometimes she felt that she should claim under entertainment; at other times she feels that she should just claim under travel expenses. Sometimes, I will have to do, and re-do, and re-do her expenses at least 3 times, before she is satisfied, and endorses it.
5. My boss has high expectations of me. I think I did blog about this before, that she expects a human with 8 hands to be supporting her. One moment, she asked me to do something for her, URGENTLY, the next she starts lecturing me for something not quite my fault, and expects me to be standing there listening to her. Then, she will ask ‘so have you done that URGENT thing?’ OF COURSE NOT LA!!! If I said I have done it, I think she will be more scared than happy.

I think I am not good enough for her. I think she expects more from me. I think she would have preferred an alien with many hands, or an Octopus at least, to assist her in her work.

I think I need to undergo a surgery in order to do my job better. A surgery to implant more hands, and the ability to split myself into 2 or more when necessary.

Any recommendations, anyone?

No comments: