Ado Annie

Look it up, kids – she’s singing my song.

The one way in which I align with the expectations of people who think that being “just a secretary” is an ambitionless state without honor is that, through much of my life and career, I have not been what anyone would call an overachiever. My job, as much as I love it, is at the end of the day a means to an end. It isn’t who I am. I didn’t dream of becoming a secretary when I was a kid – but then, I didn’t dream of becoming an astronaut, artist, politician, nor corporate go-getter either. I was interested in *life*, not the means by which to pay for it.

Certainly, being a professorial family, we were not over-endowed with the means to pay for a lot of things when I was growing up. We didn’t suffer penury, but we were not wealthy – and didn’t especially aspire to be, either. Okay, maybe mom. But she took care of herself. She was the investor, of my parents, the one driven by certain financial motivators – and she took care of that. But my expectations were not set on wealth … and so, for a long time, my expectations of myself in a job weren’t exactly exalted either. You work, you do okay, you get paid, fine.

It took me until I was thirty to realize how much I *cared* about my work. Strange to think how many years ago that was, too – it doesn’t feel like a decade and a half – but then, what does a decade and a half feel like? (It looks like hell, but that’s another post/kvetch …)

Age thirty was about the time I had spent three or four years worming my way into the entire works of the agency I worked for at that time. I took on a lot there. Learned over a dozen software packages. Became the entire company’s go-to for tech issues when our Tech guy was unavailable (and I was amazingly good, too, now that I think of it – being the luddite I am now! … huh). Created, edited, produced, and all but wrote our newsletter – complete with all those yummy, delicious sales stats our guys loved to show off publicly. I got myself Life/Health licensed and was on the way to some securities certifications, too. I took on responsibility for all our orphan clients, and over the course of my tenure there I was assistant to at least four different folks, some of whom were founding partners. This was where I worked that amazing day the Dow first topped 10,000. This was where I encountered one of the best managers I ever expect the privilege of working with. She saw what I was good at and what I enjoyed, and maximized both those things in a balance that paid off DEARLY for our employer. I still have such respect and gratitude for her, though I haven’t seen her now in 15 years.

I got to be well enough liked that I got professionally felt up. “Do you know an admin who’d like to get paid what you might think is megabucks … ?”;

I still remember calling my dad that night – “dad, was this guy asking what I think he was asking?” “Yes, that’s pretty much international code for ‘would you like this job?’”;

To this day, I honestly could not identify what I ever did for this particular client that got his attention and made him offer me a job, but I didn’t stay with that outfit more than four months anyway. The fact was, it was the single worst job I ever had, and when I walked out the door the daily notice of the stock price was plummeting, and I cannot pretend that seeing their name in ugly WSJ headlines didn’t fill me with gleeful schadenfreude.

But that job – the salary I thought was megabucks at that time, and the first time I ever got to put “executive” in front of my “admin” – changed things for me profoundly. My next job paid better, and was itself a great gig. I became indispensable across the largest national division out of four. Over my time there, I taught all the other divisional admins how I did my job. I loved my team (most of whom I never had the opportunity to meet) and they loved me. I also got vice presidential bonuses – every quarter. But it was the nineties. Times were different …;

Even going unemployed for eight and a half months after 9/11, I never lost my home. And was blessed with a temp gig after that, which I was able to promptly parlay into full time (a manager who saw the benefits of advancing his people; he was known for running something of a nursery for promising contributors). From that, I promoted myself two more times, finally spending five and a half years with that employer, over the course of four positions. By age 40, in the space of ten years, I had improved my financial standard of living by forty percent. I was proud as hell of that – could quote statistics, for the longest time, of the relative movement of my career from “can we afford toilet paper?” while I was married in the Midwest to owning my own home and having a car I’d actually chosen, not had handed down to me.


***


And so it is that I came to my new job – now three years old almost, unbelievably – with a bit of a “thing” about how good I am. I hated my last gig – the last thing they needed, wanted, nor knew what to do with was a secretary with a fully functional brain (that one manager was impressed with me – and OUTRAGED when they laid me off – but they laid him off in turn, and we’re both probably very well out of that place). By the time they severed me, I’d been looking for work already for over three months. I still remember that, too. The case of bitchface our executive had, as if my being fired by her somehow offended her. Whatever, lady, you abandoned our group a year before I did. (Bloody COBRA. Stuff your bloody COBRA.)

And here we are.

Things being what they have been, it’s not surprising I suppose that this past year-almost has seen some difficulty. Last summer was the litany of losing Siddy, being in a wreck, having a cancer scare (and all that in one WEEK), and so on. Then sustained frustration with myself at work owing to lawyers and life itself, not to mention debilitating horror at what lawyers can do to a somewhat decent living, hard-earned. A good amount of trouble with certain relationships. Life, life, life, life.

Every time I think things are getting better, ONE mistake crops up and turns out to be visible to the wrong people. Last night, I sent that whole list of “here is what is done” and found out this morning that item one – a crucial bit having to do with someone’s expense reimbursement – was NOT done, and I had mistakenly relied on technology which never did its job.

I tried again today. Tech thus far has stayed mum on its part of the bargain. This time, though, I did some confirming, some follow up – things are done.

And thus – the Conversation. As Top Boss put it the first time we had this chat – there is fear I am overwhelmed. “It’s not a problem with attitude nor aptitude.”;

Surprisingly, my response to this concern is not to admit the problem. It is to over-own, as one of my coworkers puts it, and to try to pretend away the sheer volume and try to take on MORE.

My mom, and dad too, were he here to read this in any way those of us still tramping the dirt of life as we know it could recognize, would probably scoff, even if only inwardly, at this idea. Diane is Bart Simpson. Diane is good, but she’s never been THAT good.

My own response to my own responses is enormously skeptical. I know I only do what is most necessary.

The problem is that I have become a person for whom it is necessary to be perceived as NEVER offloading. Anything. At work. (Heh.)

My standard phrasing on our chat software is “What can I do for you?” I’ve given at least one manager a complex, because I say that and he gets all guilty that he only ever chats me when he needs something from me.

But – I mean, dur, that’s what they pay us all for. Right?

My standard phrasing in email is, “if there is anything I may do or provide.”;

Now, let’s get this bit straight right here – I am not this interested in just doing, doing, doing. HOWEVER. I am PAID to do, do, and do.

What I am not paid to do is to fail at doing.

Which means … I actually need to learn to say no.

Mamma knows – and Mojourner can testify – this is not something I am naturally programmed for, when it comes to authority. (Moj learned how to do it early – heh – but as much of a pain of a girl as I’ve always been, actually refusing anyone I perceive to be superior to myself (a surprisingly high percentage of the population, some days) is damned near impossible.) At the bottom of my stylishly-soled feet, at the bottom of my whitening roots – I am still the little brown-haired girl who desperately cannot take power. And so, oddly enough, I take ON … too much?

Top Boss was clear, today. I need to put people off, I need to push back.

Oddly enough, I’ve actually done that a couple of times lately. It made me half sick with guilt, too. I hate asking ANYONE else to do my job.

Top Boss himself, actually, has headed me off personally – asking that one “what can I do for you” manager to take on some of the logistical planning for the huge events we have coming next week. It makes sense.

But my little, shy, brown-haired core is terrified it means I haven’t been good enough. I’m actually near tears of frustration just typing it here. I feel like a disappointment. It’s a pretty sick feeling, because – again – I know how disappointing I actually *am* deep down inside where nobody sees past all the fakery of professional alacrity.

There’s a gratification in competence, and I am surprised by my own pretty much every time. Because I know how happy I would be to go home, curl up on the couch with a good book or a particularly bad movie, and perhaps never work again, if only I had the option.

Intellectually, I know most of us feel that way, at least some of the time. But I also know, believe deep in myself, that “everyone else” is better than I am, if only by some variable degree. “Everyone else” had some thoughts, when they were younger, about what they wanted to “be” to “do” … Everyone else earned some position or other legitimately, and is pushing to improve. I’m not interested in “improving” – as defined by getting out of my current job. I happen to LOVE my job, and what I do. I also know how much everyone else hates the work I do – and so I am loath to give it to anyone else, ever.

It isn’t so much greed – “This job is MINE, and you cannot have it (and it is thin at one end and thick in the middle – oh, wait …)” – as it is, “I know how sucky my job is and I would never give it to anyone else, plus I don’t think it’s sucky, so let me do that.” The number of times, especially given the extremely virtual nature of my team, I have had the conversation “I do NOT want to ask you to do my job!” is incalculable.

For a while there, taking it all on was do-able.

But this past number of months … it’s more than one job, anymore. Need to learn to “push back” as Top Boss put it. Need to learn how to measure scope and set other people’s expectations. Need to put people off.

That’ll be a trick. I’m just a girl who can’t say no.

Who ever would have thought? (Not my mom …)