I started this job back on the first Monday in January of 2012. I transferred over here from my previous job because, mostly, I was bored and my new boss asked nicely. I thought maybe I’d make more money, but so far I’ve actually made *less* money, simply because I don’t get paid time-and-a-half when I work more than 40 hours a week. In fact, any time between 40:01– 44:59 they don’t pay me for at all. I really try not to work more than 40 hours a week.
I also took the job because it moved me to a new “tier” in the whole ladder in the corporation. The job I had before (“Technical Data Specialist III”) was as high up as I could get. There is no further promotion from there. In order to get further along on the pay scale, I’d have to change to another job. So that’s what I did, and I’m now an “Engineering Scheduling & Tracking Analyst I” – same pay but salaried instead of hourly and at the bottom of the tier with room to move up.
If you asked me what I did at work for the last year, though, the answer that you’d get would be “Super Admin Plus” because what I was doing was a huge mix of what the admin in the cubical where I sit these days used to do PLUS the more technical stuff that she wasn’t capable of handling. (She’s a delightful woman and I wish her all the best, but she was not a good fit for this boss, personality-wise, and she’s not that great with computers.) So I’ve been taking care of setting up meetings (scheduling, rescheduling, re-rescheduling, cancelling, starting over again) and ordering office supplies and making sure that certain paperwork is updated and reported appropriately and lots of things that aren’t terribly complicated but oh, heavens, there is A LOT of it. And then I’ve also been tracking milestones and actions and dates on different schedules and encouraging people regarding those dates. And then on top of that, I’ve been helping to answer questions and concerns for my boss, my department, the rest of the room where we sit, and the rest of the building, in that order, with about that order of frequency (i.e. boss = lots, everybody else = less). My boss is a go-getting type of guy; always on the run, popping off questions and dashing off while I’m trying to find the answer and then trying to find him again in order to give him the answer.
It has not been a boring year, let me tell you that FOR SURE.
And while I have several frustrations with the job (I cringe every time someone says they’re going to need a desk for someone new or when someone asks me to find a conference room right away), I do think I’ve had a lot more fun this last year than I did the five years at the other position. * I know more of my coworkers and feel like I’m actually contributing in a meaningful way. It’s been a nice change from the other job, where I was putting together the same document again and again and again, with slight tweaks each time.
Anyway, back at the end of December, my boss got promoted to become a director over the area where we’re working. ** So he’s looking at having a lot more responsibility and someone else is going to be coming in to do the job he has been doing – two somebodies, actually. And somewhere in all of that, he decided that he’d really like me to be doing what I was hired to do instead of being the admin for the group.
This came as a bit of a surprise to me. Not an unhappy one, to be sure, because it’ll mean I get to do more work with Excel and Project and do planning and scheduling and things that are actually what I had wanted to be doing in the first place. I don’t mind that I’ve been doing admin work and the people in this group have been super appreciative about the work that I do. But we’ve all been feeling the need to have someone working on the work that I was hired to be doing.
So yesterday my boss did three interviews for the administrative assistant position that I’ve been doing. He offered the job to one of them and she’s going to be starting on March 11th.
I am SO relieved!! I’m looking forward to the day when I can stop setting up meetings! We went through a list of things that I do right now and most of the tasks will be transferred over to the new admin. That’s not to say that I won’t have much to do – it’s just that I’ve been spending so much of my time doing those tasks that I haven’t even started doing the work that I’m supposed to be doing.
There will be a transition time, when we’ll both be sharing the admin desk and I’ll be training her how to do all the stuff that I do right now. She’s got a lot of experience and she’s a smart cookie, from what I could tell from her resume (I wasn’t invited to the interviews), and I’m sure she’s going to do this job even better than I did. And then I’ll be freed up to do other things!
Of course, then my boss will probably move me to another building, into an office where there aren’t any windows, and I might go a little bit crazy.*** But at least I won’t be scheduling meetings!!!!!
*I will actually have been a “direct” employee at this corporation for 5 years on November 3 of this year. How crazy is that?! But you know what that means? More vacation time next year!
**And then at the end of March, the current senior VP is retiring and one of the VPs in this area is moving up to fill that position and then someone else is going to be taking over his old job and good gosh has there been a lot of shuffling going on. But this doesn’t actually apply to what I’m talking about right now.
***Seriously, I might have to get a sun-lamp for my desk if they put me in that cave they call an office space .