Happy Administrative Professionals Day!

Always be nice to secretaries. They are the real gatekeepers in the world.

 —Anthony J. D’Angelo

To all my comrades-in-arms I salute you!  Remember we are many and THEY are few.  Without us, they would never remember where they were suppose to be, where that file was, and who got paid when.

Administrative Professionals UNITE!

(Okay, I’m over the top today, but celebrate your greatness.  We may not get a lot of recognition in the trenches but without us the various corporations, governments and organizations would be in terrible dissaray.)

Smile

I read the most delightful blog entry this morning entitled “I’m Bringing My Preschool Attitude to Work“.  This entry just tickled me pink. 

You see, I’ve found that everyone gets buried in their jobs and responsibilities and forget simple courtesies.  People forget the value of a smile, a hug, and a ‘good job’.  Especially in today’s economic climate where everyone is working hard to just keep their job. 

No matter how I’m feeling I do my best to greet everyone who comes my way with a smile, a warm greeting and a positive thought (Hugging doesn’t go over well in my office environment).  I’d rather be making an effort to make my environment as positive as possible than dragging it down through negativity.

Worse case scenario, everyone is alway wondering what I’m up to.

Random Acts

Every once in awhile you find yourself the recipient of a random act of kindness, not for anything in particular just for doing your job. Yesterday, was a day for random acts of kindness for me. Both to give and receive.

To Give:

I received a frantic call from one of my fellow Admins in our New York office with an AP question. This was an arena I could find a solution to her problem, the people I needed were all around me. With help from my network, her issues were swiftly solved. I made sure to that my friend who spearheaded the fix, by emailing a quick ‘good job’ email to her boss. This is something I would do for anyone who has gone out of their way to help me. My friend said to me she was only doing her job, to me she moved a mountain. I had to make sure that her effort was acknowledged.

To Receive:

The same day, someone came to me looking for a typewriter. We have one on the floor, but it hasn’t been used since I started with the company. She had forms that had to be manually filled out. We plugged in the dinosaur and found out that the ribbon was dry as a bone. I looked at the form and realized that I could make an ADOBE form out of the form if we scan the document. Really, it was an easy fix. It took a few minutes to do and a few tweaks after that to perfect it. And Voila! No need for a typewriter. I was just doing my job.

This is what she sent my boss:

“Hi XXXX

Every once in a while, even though great people perform above the bar daily, someone really exceeds expectations, and I wanted you to know that XXXX “saved the day” for me. All I needed was a working typewriter to fill out a form for some of our XXXXXXX employees. She was right on it….looking to ease my burden of having to use a typewriter. She created a form with Adobe……something I didn’t even know was possible.

She is always great with requests and today she exceeded my expectations and helped with making the process more efficient….She saved the day!
And she taught me something!
We’re fortunate to have her.

Just wanted to let you know…..”

It’s moments like this that make my day.