Happy Stepford Secretaries' Day! Via brutapesiqua @ Flickr.
Welcome to Harpy Seminar, a regular feature we plan to have at regular intervals, unless we get too busy to have it at regular intervals, in which case it shall appear whenever we have time and inclination for it. Each Seminar begins with a question, which we discuss amongst ourselves, and we then edit the highlights of our conversation into a post. Please feel free to join in in the comments!
Happy Administrative Professionals Day, ladies! We’re using this special day as an opportunity to chat amongst ourselves about women’s work. Because, let’s face it, Administrative Professionals Day holiday started in 1952 as Secretary’s Day, a way for the Boss (i.e. men) to acknowledge his Secretary (i.e women). And while we don’t call them secretaries anymore, the overwhelming majority of “administrative professionals” are women. “Administration,” like teaching or nursing or childcare, is still almost exclusively women’s work. So let’s talk women’s work, shall we?
What kind of woman-ly work have y’all done to pay the bills?
PilgrimSoul: I used to help administer summer medical conferences as an undergrad, and it was rid. ic. u. lous, the way people spoke to the organizers of what was essentially an opportunity to bathe in corporate sponsor money in a location. The organizers were, of course, women, who spent their days and educations on deciding on fonts for the program and fielding calls from overly self-confident professionals who clearly thought we were stupid illiterate hacks who nonetheless were there to wait on them hand and foot.
BeckySharper: During high school I was a “summer receptionist” for a big suburban real estate office. I had such pleasant phone manner! Then during my summers off from college I worked as a “junior secretary”–oh yes, they still called it that in the mid ’90s!–for a labor union on L Street in DC. That was less about the pleasant phone manner, more about entering data for the benefits department, including, sometimes, sorting through piles of death certificates, which was a little ghoulish, but also voyeuristically fascinating. Still, at both places the office staff showed up in the requisite knee-length skirts, flats and pantyhose. That’s how the ladies rolled. I never once saw–in those jobs or any of the temp work I did–a man in an “administrative professional” job.
SarahMC: My first job was that of administrative assistant too; I worked for a small non-profit. I (wo)manned the front desk, answered the phone, and acted as assistant to the communications director. The office consisted mostly of women and our board of directors was almost exclusively women. That’s another interesting facet of the working world – the non-profit sector is predominantly female. It wasn’t a bad job but there was no room for growth so I moved on after a year.
So I moved to DC to work as an admin assistant at a lobbying firm (aka the seventh circle of hell). My bosses were a male lobbyist and a female lobbyist, who were absolute jerks. I sat at a cubicle between the two offices and suffered abuse from both sides. The man had an anger management problem, and would get up in my face if I made an error or failed to accurately read his mind. They did not allow any sort of learning curve. The woman took advantage of me. She’d have me run to the ATM to withdraw money for her, contest parking tickets for her, return diet pills to the online distributor… etc. I hated every minute of it. Luckily that stint was short lived; after three months HR let me go because I was not cut out for it. Damn straight.
sarah.of.a.lesser.god: I have intense phone-answering anxiety, and the one time I was hired as an administrative assistant, I had a panic attack my very first hour on the job and ran out crying. That was not a high point in my scattershot career!
But the two jobs I had the most fun with were also the most “womanly.” I was a daycare teacher, in charge, alongside one other teacher, of fifteen children ages two and three. I potty-trained fourteen of them (one had developmental problems and refused to be trained), dished out bad tater tots, broke up kiddie fights, read stories, and treated scraped knees. It was heaven for someone who loves kids, and solidified my maternal longings, BUT it paid next to nothing. About $7 an hour. And there were no male teachers or administrators in the entire facility. Definitely pegged as “woman’s work.” If there was ever evidence that child-rearing is still considered a woman’s job, I think it’s the that the care of young children even outside of the home is almost exclusively designated to women.
I also worked in retail, in the children’s section at Nordstrom and then as a lingerie stylist (ooh-la-la!) and assistant manager at a large upscale New York City store. Again, it was very female-dominated. It definitely fit the stereotype of all women’s boutiques being staffed by women and gay men. The gender politics were pretty interesting at that place given the emphasis that was put on how you presented yourself.
PhDork: I’ve never been in an admin/secretarial position, but I have done puh-lenty of “service” work to get through school debt-free, like catering, waiting tables, dishwashing, child-care, teaching and/or babysitting young kids, shilling sportswear and toys…and those are just the ones I can think of at the moment.
Hmmm, what do all of those gigs have in common? Oh, I know! 1) they’re poorly paid and little respected, and 2) they’re disproportionately performed by women.
BeckySharper: But is that to say that “women’s work” is all just scut work? Or can women still “top from the bottom” in the workplace?
PhDork: Working in academia, you learn right quick–if you’re at all wise–that department admins (who in my experience are female 95% of the time) are simultaneously the heart and the brain of any given department. Not only do they often set the emotional tone of the office, since they spend so much face-time with people, they are the clearinghouse for information. They have contacts, they know how the university works, and they can use that information for or against you, depending on how you treat them.
They may not be terribly well-respected in the world at large, but the department admins I know are rightfully both loved and occasionally feared. They have power, and they know how to use it. My regret is that their power has to be cloaked by ideas or affectations of subservience, so that it can continue to exist.
PilgrimSoul: Mostly, these days, though, administrative professionals work for me rather than above or at the same level as me, so I evaluate them. And usually, as with my current assistant, they are twenty years older than me, easily. Which is a weird dynamic. I am lucky, because my current assistant is way, way overqualified for her job and so tends not to be deferential, which would make me very uncomfortable.
BeckySharper: I’ve had more than one assistant–always female–who was the same age or older than me, and one had a higher degree than I do. It was never a huge issue, mainly because they were cool women and I tried to be a good boss, but yeah, if I’d had insecurity issues or they had, it would have made for a weird working dynamic.
PilgrimSoul: I generally have more in common with the admin professionals than the lawyers at my workplace, so I am buddies with most of them, and I find that important as an activist tool. Because it makes my workplace feel, I think, less structured and hierarchy-driven, when people disregard the terms on which they are supposed to “professionally” interact with others.
In conclusion, I seem to make an extremely poor professional. (ed: Untrue!)
SarahMC: In my current job I was hired as assistant to the president, and my boss showed a lot of appreciation for my work. After a year I was promoted, and I’m no longer working in an admin position. It’s hard stuff, doing that grunt work and juggling the responsibilities coming at you from every angle. I’m glad I’m no longer doing it because I am easily frazzled. Kudos to the ladies (and gents) doing traditional “women’s work.”
BeckySharper: Amen! So ladies, what’s your take? Work it in the comments..
If today is Administrative Professionals Day, why have so many people walking into this office where I am a receptionist forgotten to wish me a happy one? And/or say “good morning” to me?
Also, the combination of being a receptionist and reading feminist websites all day has made me extremely aware of the way I am spoken to and treated throughout the day, and I really don’t know what to think of it. While I’m not necessarily spoken down to, I’m pretty sure that I am assumed to be stupid by all who speak to me, so that when I do display competence (and occasionally wit!) they are taken aback. I think this has more to do with my youth than my gender, or maybe I just project an aura of incompetence.
When I dropped out of grad school, I worked the front dest at a bank headquarters. One day, when the regulators were there, one of them asked me what I was reading and, when I showed him the book about databases, told me that was great, and that if I worked hard, I’d probably be able to get a two-year degree.
I restrained myself and didn’t mention that I was only a few credits short of my masters in chemistry, which probably made me significantly better educated than him.
The assumption that receptionists and assistants are uneducated is weird. And the patronizing attitude toward a young woman in an office isn’t weird enough.
I’ve done almost exclusively women’s work jobs, except for my brief stint as a “translation consultant,” a gig I only landed because of a family connection and because I was willing to charge less than a certified translator. Otherwise, I’ve been a restaurant hostess and then a cocktail waitress at the same place, and I’ve done front desk work. I actually enjoyed the front desk work just fine, although I was treated badly on occasion. I didn’t take it nearly as hard, though, as when people were rude to me in the restaurant. It’s easier for me to understand being rude or even angry at a medical facility (you’re sick or paying out of pocket or scared of what the tests will say) than to a restaurant hostess or waitress (what, you can’t get a seat immediately at a crowded place on a weekend? There are bigger problems in the world). In both cases, still, people assumed I was an idiot. A few people asked if I was in college when I was a front desk person (at the time: yes) but never at the restaurant. I was talked down to in both cases, but like Khruschev, I’m not sure if that was due to my age more than my gender, or even my size. Being small has meant throughout my life that people treat me like a child.
I worked as a file clerk in a medical office all through high school and one college summer. All the other support staff and all the nurses were women and all the docs were men except one lesbian they hired my last year there bc they thought she wouldn’t take maternity leave and then she totally adopted and took time off!!! HA!
In college when I briefly thought I wanted to work in entertainment I worked in a huge famous casting office and as assistant to a film publicist, both of which were wretched, underpaid and abusive jobs. I had a phone thrown at me and was called a cunt (I quit).
Now I work in non profits so there is no support staff; we do everything ourselves. Never been anyone’s boss, though even my psychiatrist says I would benefit from an admin assistant so I do aspire to it one day.
PhD, did you just say DEBT-FREE??? ***fans self*** My utter respect, congratulations, and total jealousy.
ps SOALG INSANE that you potty trained developmentally disabled kids and only got paid 7 bucks….no justice in this world.
Simple, Khrushchev! You are not a person! Get over your desire to be treated like a human being!
@JD: There will actually be a post about that job later today, because it was really a formative experience for better or for worse.
@Av0gadro: That assumption about intelligence is so horrid and is also found in the service industry. Nothing turns me off more than people being gratuitous assholes to people in service/admin assistant positions.
I worked an administrative position at a university when I was 22 and, to echo Khrushchev’s comment, people were always surprised when they realized that I had a brain in my skull. A lot of the professors and grad students condescended to me (and those who treated me with respect and humanity quickly found out that they would get preferential treatment from me, like PhDork noted). When I left the department to begin my PhD work, a lot of them seemed shocked that I even had an undergraduate degree– their surprise was palpable, even though I think I was pretty good at my job.
At the end of the day, though, it was a good experience, because it taught me a lot about academic politics and trained me how to treat the admin in my new department– I mean, I would have been respectful and friendly regardless, but now I could better anticipate the things that would be annoying to her. I think being an admin is sort of like being a waitress or a cashier, in that it’s the kind of thing that everyone should have to do once in their life.
@Khruschev: They suck. Although maybe they didn’t know it was AP Day? Lots of people probably don’t. Still, sounds like they suck regardless.
@s.o.l.a.g.: I once dumped an otherwise very nice and attractive man because he was rude to the waitresses at nearly every restaurant we went to. He treated me like a queen, but the way he treated service staff was revelatory. He was shocked when I explained why I didn’t want to date him anymore. I often wonder if it made any difference in his behavior after that.
I babysat all through high school, which was a wonderful form of preventive birth control in its own way. Then I waitressed all through undergrad. Then right out of college I got hired as the admin assistant to the VP in a big Mortgage Company (rampant sleaze, shadiness and sexual harassment) aaaand thats pretty much what drove me to law school.
although I did work as a general clerk in a big firm for a while before I applied just to make sure I’d be able to stand it.
Another “women’s work” job? Librarian! In fact, the asshole known as Melvil Dewey advocated women to be librarians because we’re cheap.
But I digress.
I have only worked in one administrative position, that of intern/receptionist at a financial planning firm the summer after my sophomore year of college. I enjoyed it, actually, but would have been bored out of my mind had it been longer that 3 months. I also had the fortune to be working with three genuinely nice and intellectually interested financial planners, however, who still thank me for teaching them how to do online research ten years later when I see them.
Clearly, I was always destined to do what I do.
Now I’m a corporate librarian (technically Information & Knowledge Officer because librarian is a dirty word in the private sector). I do research, I teach people to do research, I spent hours haggling with information vendors in order to get essential information at a decent price. I don’t have an assistant and never will. The other people here treat me alternately like an information goddess and a slightly slow-witted assistant, depending upon who I happen to be dealing with at the time. I’m sure you can tell which ones I like better.
The only jobs I’ve ever had that WEREN’T women’s work were manual labor related. At 16 I unloaded trucks for Target at 4:30 am because I wanted a summer job that still allowed me to spend the afternoon at the pool. And one summer during college I worked at a state park managing the campground, cleaning picnic pavilions helping people set up their tents.
All my other jobs for the last 10 years fall under admin, human resources, secretary or coffee girl. The worst was answering phones for Vector (the Cutco knife people) where my boss told me if I worked really really hard someday I might be promoted to his own PERSONAL secretary instead of just phone bitch. I quit after two weeks.
Also, I frickin hate Administrative Professionals day. My boss always forgot about it until he got to work and saw it on Yahoo news, then sent one of the other women out to buy me a half-wilted plant and promised to take me to lunch sometime next week – which he never did.
We did a lot of these jobs to put ourselves through school or as summer jobs — what do boys do? When I looked around at the hostess stand or at the front desk of the medical facility, I saw only women. Where are the boys? They must have summer jobs too, right?
Note: I’m not trying to say “what about the poor poor men?” here, I’m just wondering how these jobs can continue to be so gendered, especially if we’re doing them in high school and college.
I’m pretty sure no one here knows it’s administrative professionals day, but that’s OK b/c I have a kickass boss who is always telling me what an awesome job I do, how much I’m appreciated, and how the department could not run without me… and I’ll take day to day appreciation and acknowledgment over flowers once a year for sure.
In college, I worked retail, was a camp counselor, and interned as an archivist. Post college, I’ve been an office manager to a real estate firm and am now an administrative assistant to an academic department at a state liberal arts school. No one here has assumed that I’m uneducated, and I’ve been encouraged to take advantage of free classes, which I will be doing in the English grad department this fall (18th Century Women’s Writers what what!). Sometimes, when hanging out with my social circle which is almost entirely made up of doctors, I worry that people don’t know I’m smart, that they think I am “just a secretary.” I get insecure and feel the need to prove myself. (I graduated at the top of TWO majors! I turned down internships at the White House and State Department because I didn’t WANT that life! I could be in a real grad program right now if I wanted to!) But I’ve gotten over it– I like my job, I love my boss, and I like my hours and where I work. After 3 months on unemployment, I’m mostly thankful for benefits, a paycheck, and a laid back dress code.
I’m a legal assistant at a mid-sized law firm. I work for a team of five attorneys (4 women, 1 man) who were interested enough to discover, on my first day, that I had a degree, was applying to grad school, and was capable of doing good work for them. They’ve never treated me with anything but respect. And I walked in today to find a lovely bouquet on my desk- signed by one of the women for all of them, of course. This job is mundane and underpaid, but working for such wonderful people makes all the difference.
kithkin– at least in my hubs case, he worked landscaping, he worked construction, he was a camp counselor, and he worked at the Olive Garden to put himself through school. I’d take an air conditioned office over landscaping or construction ANY day.
Yeah boys I grew up with worked mowing lawns/landscaping, pouring tar for driveways, painting houses, working on farms, or being lifeguards at the shore. It’s totally womens work = communicating/organizing (inside voices) vs. mens work = physical (outside voices). At the time we got paid about equal but I think as you get older the physical jobs tend to pay better than the communicating jobs.
It’s interesting because as this is the only workplace I’ve been in in the States, I just assumed everyone celebrated admin professionals day. The gift-giving is uneven and depends from person to person, but we have a brunch and the managers send out reminder emails for several days before so we won’t forget.
I was an admin assistant throughout college and even though I was going to a pretty decent school, which my co-workers knew (since they worked for that school!), I was assumed to be an idiot.
Also, a co-worker once offered his friend his half-eaten Chinese food (ew), and when the other guy refused, he went to throw it away. When he was a couple inches from dumping it in the trash he suddenly asked me “Or maybe you want it?” Gee, no thanks, person who’s never spoken to me, I don’t want your leftovers with your germs. Weird, huh?
The crappy treatment I got as an admin has, I think, made me treat my assistant and other admins better. I’d like to think that I would treat them well anyway, but the experience of having been in their shoes has most likely helped. Unlike, say, EVERY male partner who works here and has never been in an admin job. I’d say 80% mistreat their assistants.
@ratinski: “The other people here treat me alternately like an information goddess and a slightly slow-witted assistant, depending upon who I happen to be dealing with at the time.”
We get that at the PL too.
Male patrons will interrupt a complicated tech/ref question (usually with a female patron) and pretend that their willies give them some kind of magical computer knowledge. They swoop in, take over, and mislead the patron, who is of course so cowed by all that male privilege that she stops working with me and start listening to the dude. Mind you, these dudes can’t figure out how to get Word to double-space, and they can’t attach a file to their e-mail, but they’re way more knowledgeable than a woman with a Masters degree, amirite?
@P.Soul – My firm did a big breakfast and has cake in the afternoon. They used to send everyone flowers, too, but I think that’s been cut this year. The gift-giving is uneven, but pretty in line with each admin’s abilities and temperament, e.g., my assistant, who is nice and super-competent, got several nice gifts from all of her attorneys, whereas the evil dragon who “forgets” to do copy jobs, spends hours on personal calls every day, and tells people she thinks that every female associate who’s gained weight is pregnant didn’t get as much.
Khrushchev: Happy Administrative Professional’s Day! You do good work, and we appreciate you!
JDR: Debt-free, but also asset-free. No house, no car, no retirement, no nothin’. My greatest financial “investment” is my oldest cat, and he ain’t appreciating.
Ratinski: Library work IS often “lady work.” Dude’s mom is a school librarian, Dude’s sister (a elementary teacher) works at a public library in the summers, and they are as professional as anyone I know. Also, Dewey was an asshole, and the LC system makes way more sense, anyway.
PHD I am still impressed. Assets are overvalued anyway! I too am asset free (well I have a rusty old car and a couple thou in “savings”) plus I have about 5x my salary in student debt! At least it’s not credit cards.
i work as an assistant and my boss gave me cold hard cash for secretaries/assistants week. i was shocked. he hasn’t been the nicest person lately, and there’s a lot going on in my personal life right now that is out of my control, so maybe the cold hard cash is a penance. either way, i’m blown away.
PHD: LC makes more sense for academic libraries, but is kind of disastrous in smaller libraries, especially school and small public libraries, due to the lack of browsability. At the same time, Dewey is a pain in the ass in large systems, because the numbers get so fecking long. Personally, I’m a fan of Ranganathan’s Colon Classification, but it’s rarely used in the west despite the fact that it’s one of the few that’s truly faceted and truly gets at the true subject matter of a material.
…Believe it or not, I actually hate cataloging and classification.
I was a file clerk for three summers during college. I sat on a stool in a 10×10 file room and fetched and filed.
So when it came time for me to be a lawyer, I showed great deference to the staff. I know how it feels. And I think they appreciate that I have been there.
Oh, and my time working Drive Through at McDonald’s gives me wicked street cred. Not “woman’s” work per se, but it raises eyebrows.
@waltzingmatilda, I worked at Mickey D’s too, and people have been surprised by that (I’m a lawyer too). My kiddo is working a service sector job in high school, for at least a summer.
@maritsa Yeah mom! Seriously, people may make fun – but I was 15/16 and it was a great learning experience and taught me responsibility. My kids will definitely have summer jobs. I am so grateful that I was allowed (and encouraged) to do that.
I’ve never had a real admin assistant’s job, I work in IT.
But I swear sometimes I get treated like a high tech assistant by some of the bosses I’ve had.
I.E. all the shit work of writing one shot db queries, support tasks, and other things no one really appreciates but has to get done. Also my boss is out for back surgery and I had a male co-worker suggest that I get everyone together to get a card/flowers for him cause I’m a girl.
I envy everyone who gets to work in more female environments. I’m always stuck in this odd limbo of being the woman on the team and being invisible/one of the guys. At the christmas party this year I was the only woman at the table and there were a lot of pretty administrative women around and my married boss made a comment about how he missed being single sometimes. One of my more progressive coworkers thought the look on my face was absolutely hillarious when i heard that.
Then another time I was out to lunch with my new boss and one of the other developers(both have at least 10 to 15 years on me). my boss was talking about a home improvement project his wife had botched and litterally turned to me and said “Sometimes women just need a project to work on” which i would say is probably true of people in general but just the way he said it made me wonder if he realized I was a woman.
@waltzing and @maritsa: Mickey D’s workers represent! It was a great learning experience, wasn’t it?
I’m currently the “office administrator” for a post-production company. It’s not half-bad most of the time, but occasionally I’ll get assholery in the form of people presuming that I’m stupid (“Can you just make the coffee? Are you capable of that?”–a man, naturally, said this to me) to just not being listened to because I’m a woman, or I’m “just a secretary”, instead of acknowledging that I have a degree in English, I am exceptionally well-read, and I’m the best damn editor you’re ever had, and you know it.
‘S funny–I’m paid very little, but I’m expected to do things like read contracts, translate scripts, troubleshoot our website…It’s such a weird combination of being in a subservient job position while being expected to carry so much responsibility.
I wish secretarial/administrative/women’s work was acknowledged to be as hard as it fucking is.
I get more respect as a stage manager/lighting technician than I ever have as an assistant. Perhaps it’s because, as a techie, I wear black clothes, carry wrenches and knives, speak in a lower voice, and am acknowledged as an authority?
Why do I have to act partially masculine in order to be respected?
Administrative Professionals Day has not been acknowledged in my office, either, but I think it’s because nobody here actually knew about it. So do I go on up to the doctor I work for and casually drop into the conversation that it’s admin professionals day and oh hai what did you get me?
@Rebecca Coffee is evil for the one reason that some people are just too lazy to make it themselves. At one place I worked out I would get endless praise for making a pot of folgers because for some reason all of the other guys couldn’t figure out how to work the coffee pot.
@Tersa: Oh my cow, that’s so true. I can get the guys who aren’t in positions of authority to make their own damned coffee, but anyone else? Hell to the no–because it’s soooo demeaning to measure a cup of grounds and press a button, yo.
By the way, nobody at my job seemed to know about what today was. Neither did my mother. This needs better publicity!
I’m an administrative assistant for a surgery division at a big university hospital. Before that, I was a file clerk/sometimes receptionist/eventual paralegal for a medium-sized law firm.
It’s funny — I don’t think anyone at my current office knows what day it is, but I don’t really mind that much. My boss went to the mat for me against our union when they tried to bump me because of my low seniority, and the doctors have always treated me with the utmost respect. They tell me they appreciate my work, and they make sure all of us in administrative positions know that we’re valued employees.
Meanwhile, the law firm celebrated by giving us all beautiful flower arrangements on Administrative Professionals Day, but it was a little hard for me to appreciate it because I was treated like crap every other day of the year. It makes me happy that Administrative Professionals Day exists, but I feel like far too many places use it as an excuse to be horrible the rest of the year. You know — “We gave you flowers on Admin Day, so why are you being so ungrateful by complaining about the sexual harassment!” Bah.
I am an administrative assistant and have mostly worked those jobs since I was eighteen and started college. I just have to say HELL YES to all those who commented on how people treat you like you’re stupid, and how the nice people always get their stuff prioritized (unless it is actually an emergency). I am lucky to have a job right now where 75% of the staff is awesome and cool to me, although most of them seem to find it amusing that I’m also enrolled in a master’s program.
I tend to hate AP Day, frankly, because my experience of it has been that people do it like it’s the one day of the year you can be appreciated. And not that I expect gifts or cards or anything from anyone, but — I much prefer the way the manager who is Jehovah’s Witness does it. She doesn’t do any holiday, so AP Day is the same as any other to her, but periodically she’ll give me flowers or sweets or something if I’ve gone “above and beyond.” But I’m a fan of random love and kindness. I actually didn’t go in today, mostly b/c of a dr’s appt, but I also dread the day itself.
APD has not been acknowledged here, but, like FF, the guys in my office tell me pretty regularly how great I am and they often come to me to get my opinion on case work and bounce ideas around.
Plus, they’re all in Detroit for a conference, so I’ve got the place to myself. Perhaps that is the greatest gift of all!
Happy APD to all who are/have been in my shoes.
Thanks, CrabbyAlissa! Happy ADP to you as well!
I was a secretary in a law firm for 6 years, part time. It paid a lot of the college bills.
Nobody is really in a fabulous mood when they’re calling a law office, let me tell you. The way the bosses treated me was never the problem; it was the clients who were disasters. However, I can unjam all sorts of copiers and printers, hold an envelope in my hand and tell you whether it needs one or two stamps based on weight, and do the smiling voice over the phone.
Now, I am simply awed at the way some people treat the admins in our academic department. Manners and common sense would suggest that they’d help the nicer people first and go out of their way more for them, so you should be one of the NICER people… not an asshole.
@Ratinski: Dewey also had some kind of pathological fear of correct spelling!
I waited tables at a 24 hour breakfast restaurant for a couple of years, which has both sex and class issues. My family always wondered why I didn’t get an office job, until I told them I could make a couple hundred dollars a night.
I work in the Circulation department of an academic library now, and no one gives me any admin shit except for my boss who is VERY position conscious. I manage the stacks with a fleet of 20 student assistants and always hear about not being “professional” enough when I am friendly to my workers at all. I would be more professional, but it seems like that is a word that means whatever the person using it wants it to mean.
Unrelatedly, a friend of mine who is a florist says APDay greatly outpaces Boss’ Day for flower sales. Probably because Boss’ have more $$ to spend on flowers.
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