There are an AWFUL lot of us admins in the world, doing what you need to have done and guarding the gates to the things and people you need the most. Thinking of us as the irrelevancies the picture dismisses us as being is dead-sure certain to get in your way at some point or another along the way to your goals. This includes business (you won't get to the boss if you don't respect the admin) ... and PUBLISHING, too, by the way, writers. You do realize: admins read your work too. They might even be your first-line to "this goes on the desk" (or "stays in the inbox").
2 comments:
If I'd been less scrupulous, I'd have written a book about my years as an admin in D.C.--specifically, all the sensitive information I could access, and all the dumb (and possibly illegal) things supposedly competent people said and did around me because they saw me as "only the temp," and thus brainless.
I'd suggest to the person who made that graphic that if they want a better administrative assistant, they should treat the job like a professional position and recruit (and pay) accordingly.
My presumption, given the context where I saw this, is that the person doesn't have an admin at all - and therefore (a) misunderstands the functions of a (good) admin and (b) semi-resentfully holds having a subordinate by this title as a privilege of which they are both jealous and a bit sour-in-the-grape about.
In my own career, I have experienced a good deal less access to knowledge by the behavior you're mentioning, but a GREAT deal of legitimate access based on my position as recording secretary for sensitive meetings, having had in the past certain HR access for timekeeping and year-end processing reasons, and various exposures connected concretely to my duties. I've been extremely fortunate, in that the jobs responsible enough for me to have gained such access have also been jobs in which my colleagues and management respected and trusted me implicitly and as a matter of professionalism.
I stopped apologizing for being an admin a very long time ago now, but have come to realize only more recently how much I actually do love my work *for itself* and not merely as a compromise from some other possible-life I might have chosen. The more I realize this, too - the better a professional I become.
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