Trouble in the office

I always enjoy Anita's insights.  This is a good read on ways to handle passive/aggressive colleagues.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

When you need it later: The Bring-Forward System

My boss likes me to keep him organized and the way I do that is to have a system to bring forward items, which I then bring to his attention when he needs to see it. The system I use is quite simple and has been around for a long time. They taught this system when I was in highschool and it is still being taught and used by many assistants today because it works! Tried and True Method: I set up 12 hanging file folders labelled January through to December. If my boss is going on a business trip in April for instance, I put his ticket, passport (if necessary) and any material he will need for his trip in the April folder, with a bf date on it i.e. April 6. If there are forms that need to filled in and it has a due date in June, I put those forms in the June folder with a bf date on it for a week before it is due. Each day before I leave for the day, I go through the appropriate hanging folder and look through it for any items my boss will need the next day. I then put the items in a two-...
Read more

Have you ever legalized marijuana?

Over the holidays I read a neat book called Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions , by Dan Ariely. The book is a fascinating glimpse into several bizarre and unfortunate bugs in our mental software. These bugs cause us to behave in weird but highly predictable ways in a bunch of everyday situations. For instance, one chapter explains why bringing an uglier version of yourself to a party is guaranteed to get you more attention than other people who are arguably better-looking than you are. I personally do this all the time, except that I'm usually the ugly one. The same principle explains a ploy used by real-estate agents to get you to buy ugly houses. Another chapter explains the bug that causes you to be a packrat, and shows why you desperately hold on to things you own, even if you know deep down that they would rate lower than pocket lint on eBay. In any case, well, good book. I'm going to harsh on it a teeny bit here, but it's only one ...
Read more

On to the next task...

The way I work is to get things off my plate as soon as possible and move on to the next task.  The problem is it is now filed in the back burner of my mind.  It is still hovering in the background somewhere, but I've completed the work, done whatever I needed to do with it and diarized whatever needed to be diarized and moved on until I need to know it again.  My boss may come out a month or so later and ask me questions about it and sometimes my mind initially draws a blank.  I need a minute to go back and check and then I am completely up to speed again. I find with the volume of work admins deal with throughout the day, week and month, we need some system to keep things straight.  For me, the thing that helps is to document everything .  I put items in my calendar as a reminder, but the problem with calendar reminders is unless you know which day you put it on or what you named it, you can't easily find it....
Read more