Secretaries Day

Today is Secretaries' Day. In offices where they care about such things, the day is traditionally celebrated by taking the secretary out to a long lunch, or buying her a potted plant. Of course, most secretaries would rather be said a decent living wage all year round than collect one more "Secretaries Are Great" pin, but Secretaries' Day is not about politics. It is about promoting Hallmark.

The great fun of the day for secretaries is, of course, watching the office try to cope without them while they are on their long celebratory lunch. After watching your average boss break the copier, send an important document into fax limbo, crash the computer system and juggle twenty people on hold, it's easy to conclude that a Secretaries Week would lead to the shutdown of corporate America.

That it is the secretaries that run everything is a truism acknowledged by anyone who has ever worked in an office. These days, most secretaries work as the single clerical support for the ten to fifteen workers of a specific section. It is the secretary who knows: how to fix the copier without calling the service person, who to call when the voice mail system goes on the blink, when every flex-time employee will actually be in the building, how to get accounting to reimburse funds even though the receipt is lost and where the copy of a bill that was sent out two years ago will be filed. It is also the secretary who must maneuver between competing egos (all of whom think the secretary should be working on their project first), placate disgruntled clients over the phone and explain to the manager of the company why the section's reports are a bit late in coming in. All this on a salary lower than that offered by McDonald's.

Many graduating seniors will shortly ascend (or descend, depending on your perspective or your politics) to business offices across America. Heed this warning now--how far your career gets depends directly on how you treat the clerical staff. They are not your servants nor are they there to take the blame everytime you screw up. Say "please" and do the little stuff on your own (it won't really hurt your dignity to address that letter yourself) and you will find that, come crunch time, the secretary will drop everything to rush your report to the Federal Express Office at the last possible minute. Behave like a kindergartener and you will confirm every suspicion they have of Harvard graduates. Worse, you will find that the graphics department put your project on lowest priority and that none of the staff wants to work with you.

Secretaries at Harvard may find whatever hooplah their bosses remember to do today a bit ironic in the face of the Universities continued attempts to undermine their union. No matter. Accept the flowers graciously. Bosses are sort of slow. They need encouragement.