I’m just the Admin chick…

So, a  high faluting manager type nonghead from  Sydney called me in a panic about an engineering structural change and what did I know about it? Had I sent it? Passed it on to anyone? Been asked about it? Er, that would be no, no, no and fuck no man, I’m doing personal printing I don't have time for work stuff today. I also added that as an office manager I managed the officey type thingys and didn’t deal with feral engineering people who, in essence, were quite yucky and reminded me of pubic hair. He then said he would send me info on the engineering thing. I pointed out if he had the info why was he asking me about it because frankly that seemed pretty damn dumb to me.

Anyway, so he sent it to me and said can you format this – he couldn’t – and send it out to everyone. I said sure, whatever. Everyone? Yes everyone.  So I sent it out to everyone. Five minutes later I get a panicked phone call asking me had I sent it out to everyone? Yes.  Every single person in every single office? Yes. Dead silence over the phone before he said did you read it? Er no, I don’t care about metal things with screws and holes punched in them. Did I see the mistake they made in it in it? No. He seemed relieved by this until I mentioned that as a non engineering person if I had of read that sticking steel girders together with spit and sticky tape was the new trend I would have said ‘whatever.’ Silence again. Are you there?  Can we recall the email, was the panicked response.   Sure, but I lets face it that’s not all that effective is it because the minute you send a recall out there like "Amarinda Jones would like to recall the email entitled ‘Spit – the new wonder glue for steel super structures’ due to a boo-boo in it” pretty much everyone is going to want to read that email to find out why the recall. What will we do when they ring and ask about the email? My standard defence to everything in the office? “I’m just the Admin chick man, I don’t know anything.”  Did they ring? Yeah. I said my line and transferred them onwards and upwards as a good admin chick does. I had printing to do.   

The brains trust...

At work there is a group of people that is considered the brains trust. They do deep, analytical stuff that I’m sure is probably going to be of some huge scientific merit that will change mankind but can they find a new container of coffee? No.

I get a call at my desk. There is no coffee. Yes there is. I’m the office manager. I mange everything from toilet paper to the D-Day landings to expenditure to cars almost running into the building…that’s another story. Anyway, I replied with those enigmatic words ‘look in the bloody cupboard.’ Which cupboard was the response? I walk to the kitchen and looked at them, then at the cupboard then back at them. They looked at me. I think to myself thank the cosmos I have average, street level, rat cunning intelligence and can manage things like finding coffee. I point to the cupboard. They look at the cupboard and ask ‘is the coffee in there?’ Yes, I respond but I make no move towards the cupboard as I want to see what they’ll do next. They continue to look at the cupboard as do I because I can almost see the cogs turning in their head as they analyse the cupboard. ‘Is there milk?’ I point then to the big white thing called the fridge. They nod and consider the fridge. I then say ‘all good now?’ They make no move to get either the coffee or the milk. How long they stood watching the cupboard and the fridge I don’t know but I expect the brilliant of mind were calculating the wind speed variables of their move to the fridge and whether the displacement of the air around them could indeed have some butterfly effect on the rest of the world.

Set the bar…

I walked into the kitchen at work the other day and there were about a dozen grungy, old coffee cups littering the kitchen bench. I walked out of the kitchen and made an announcement to the office staff along that lines of whoever had dumped the coffee cups out here needs to ‘get their arse back into the kitchen and clean them.’ This was met by a quiet ‘Okay.' It’s a predominantly male office. Before I turned up as Office Manager the previous person in the position used to wash up and – shock-frigging-horror-no-fucking-way used to make everyone coffee when they asked for it. And let's not even talk about the cake baking 'for the boys'. I think her name was Door Mat. This all stopped when I came into power. My point is this. Male dominated offices need to be whipped in to shape. Men have no bloody idea about women so give them a clue with a capital C. Establish the rules. I will not clean, cook, fetch or carry. I will not be spoken to like I’m an idiot. I can verbally, in a polite, succinct way, kick you arse from here to the front door if you push me so think before you speak. If you allow yourself to be treated like a domestic slave in the office once, it becomes a pattern and other women who follow up suffer for it. Don’t do it.

Really, I’m a sweet little thing…