Personal Assistants of Reddit: How do you help your control freak, ADD-having bosses?
Rather than give me her tasks, she does them herself and uses me mostly in a clerical sense (typing letters, helping her with her laptop conundrums, etc). She's a horrible time manager/delegator so my 8 hour days are 12 hours because she won't let me help her to the best of my capabilities. I ask her repeatedly what I can do for her, but it tends to come back to small clerical tasks that don't keep me busy for very long. Her actual role is something unrelated to the office itself and she complains at least twice a day that she's not what she should be doing because she's "busy doing everyone else's jobs" (which is only true because she doesn't let us know that she needs help or what we can do to help her).
I'm not worried about job stability, I know they consider me valuable. It should be noted that I have overseen the the office's technology upgrade and have become the defacto IT and problem-solver. They are all of an older generation that struggles with change in huge ways, so every day is full of "how do I..." questions, further entrenching my position as an office manager more than personal assistant. It makes for long, frustrating days.
I intend to sit her down, but we're on the verge of launching an enormous project of which she is at the helm by the nature of her position in the company. It is a bad time to imply that she's doing something wrong, even though it's my intention to make her life easier. They've never had a personal assistant before so the job is still being fleshed out, but it's being fleshed out poorly at present. I appreciate your thoughts and advice.
Posted Apr 13, 2013, 11:43 PM UTC