If whoever thought up Secretaries’ Week really wants to do a service to our secretaries, I have some ideas better than the ones Hallmark and www.flowers.com have come up with. These are ideas that address the daily pains in the feet, hands, brains and butt. It’s funny with elementary school secretaries because this “holiday” is usually around Earth Day. The irony of 640 kids making cards out of folded paper from the copy room and tissue paper flowers may get lost in the love. Maybe next year we can save up all the memos they’ve had to type for the past 9 months and make bouquets out of them. They can be red taped around the top of the pencil stems we’ve all lifted from their desks throughout the year. I have to hand it to them, though, secretaries have tried everything to get us to not steal their pencils. The chain stuck to the counter and to the pencil trick, the big fake flowers on the top trick, they’ve had them made to read “from the desk of…“ , I even taught at one school where the secretaries suspended them from the ceiling so they couldn’t be stolen without them being snapped back and found theoretically guilty.
Secretaries want simple things. They need good chairs. They shouldn’t have to wait around for the staff member with the most comfortable chair to retire. They should have a CEO chair, one that doesn’t have a wheel stuck in lock, tilt back too much or not lower enough. It should have adjustments so her feet can actually touch the ground, not a purse, a box or book. She would like state of the art equipment with excellent training opportunities, service agreements and a cute repair guy. If you can’t give her that, let her use the old stuff she’s used to and trusts, even if it is a typewriter. Give her an ipod so the sounds of requests, complaints, and the hundreds of questions that are thrown at her every day are dulled. Get her one of those number ticket machines so she can talk to people in numerical order when she is good and ready.
Bosses, tell your secretaries where you’re going when you leave and when you’ll be back. You’re the teenager and she’s the mom; the one who bails you out of tough situations, makes you look prepared and cleans up after you literally and figuratively.
Once a month arrange for a masseur to come in and take care of her hands, neck and feet. That will give her something no words on a card, or buds on a flower can. It’s a good psychological move too, because just about the time she gets fed up with you and starts looking for a new job, it will be time for the next massage. Who could quit then?
With the money they make, perks shouldn’t be confined to the top of the coffee pot they were just asked to clean out. Peggy and Laura…I think I got ‘em all!
Happy Secretaries Week.
