It’s National 'You Get Paid For Covering Up For An Idiot Day’

Well, that’s not the ‘official’ name for it. For you fans of The Office, I wished all of the various Administrative Professionals in our building a Happy Pam Beasley Day, but it didn’t really get the reception I was hoping for. The official name for today is Administrative Professionals Day, I think. My Administrative Professional usually helps me with stuff like that. She spends a lot of time covering up after me, so to speak. It’s not that I don’t do my job well; it’s just that I tend to do my job quickly with an emphasis on ‘volume of productivity with the utmost expediency without regard to actual competency,’ which by the way is the name of the self-help book I’ve been writing.

Seriously, our Administrative Professional is just that. No not administrative, she’s professional, very professional, in fact, unnervingly professional, it could border on non-human like professionalism. She is by far the most professional individual in our office or that I may have ever had the honor of working with. Not to take anything away from her but perhaps part of that is due to the fact that I worked for myself for 5 years and could not begin to even come close to characterizing that ‘era’ of my life as professional. Unless you consider naps, trips to McDonalds and Barney Miller reruns professional. How our AP is able to put her head down and work through everything we do (or don’t do) in any given day is beyond me. Truth be told, she keeps this place running smoothly practically single handedly.

When she’s not correcting our work, she’s busy reminding us that we are in an office environment where our clients can often hear us, especially when we are talking about them. I think one of her most challenging days to date was when all the men in the office ended up talking and laughing as men tend to do in the hallway outside of all our cubicles. Our topic of conversation? Why women of course, but not just any women, we were discussing as a forum (and then arguing over) our favorite leading women from 60s, 70s and 80s television. For the record, I still think Mary Tyler Moore in her Dick Van Dyke Show days was much hotter than Marcia Brady ever was. Our Administrative Professional let us have this heated discussion for about an hour and then she ever so politely came back and reminded us of where we were and what we should be doing. None of us complained, none of us got angry at her, we all just looked at each other, shrugged our shoulders and scurried back into our little work boxes.

Then there was the day we all decided that it was appropriate to yell out all of the song titles we could think of that contained the word ‘night’ in them. I have no idea how she got through that afternoon. This went on for at least three hours and we got very competitive. Completely undeterred, our AP managed to continue answering the phones and transferring all of the callers waiting for us into voice mail. Looking back, I still think it’s a miracle that she has never been injured during our rubberband-paperclip-slingshot games. When those start up, no one above the height of a cubicle wall is safe. You have to give us credit though; none of us has ever tried to use her as an administrative shield. That’s not to say that we haven’t thought about it, but it’s all about the baby steps.

Our Administrative Professional even takes the time in the morning to make coffee for the office, though she doesn’t always partake. To illustrate her level of professionalism, this would be the perfect time to exact her revenge and slip something into the coffee, but she never has. Although, a few people are out sick today…

Regardless of the fact that it isn’t in her job description, she makes it a habit to check our work for errors. Unfortunately, this seems to take up a majority of her day. Well, looking for the errors does not, but having to walk to each of us individually to advise us of our errors does. I am a little concerned that it seems like she spends a disproportionate amount of time going over my errors with me. Unfortunately, my coworkers have noticed this too. I just calmly explain that it is due to the fact that I work faster and therefore get more actual work completed than they do; thereby increasing the chances of me having more errors. Sadly, that is a chance that I apparently never fail to take advantage of.

Being the thoughtful group that we are, our boss presented our Administrative Professional with a nice potted plant and a card this morning. It was only when she opened it that half of us realized we forgot to sign it. To make up for this, I risked the wrath of HR and gave our Admin Professional a big thank you hug and explained from the bottom of my heart how grateful I have been to work with her for the last three years. She thanked me and then walked out of my office mumbling something that I couldn’t quite make out…