![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dchenesWebmail access is a wonderful thing. Ages ago I set up my Yahoo account so I can check my Comcast mail from it, and that was how I found the translation samples from TSF this morning. Which I then knocked off a very rough first draft of, and will go over again when I have my own computer and my "Dictionaries" bookmark list available.
Today I feel like a somewhat more worthwhile human being.
The problem with being a secretary in general, I find, is that when you don't have anything to do, you shouldn't be sitting there doing nothing. But you get to a point where everything you can do has been done; you've rearranged/filed/set up everything that needs it, and you've caught up on everything you need to be caught up on, and maybe you're waiting to hear from some people, but you can't magically make that happen, so you really honestly have nothing to do, and you're bored. I feel like I'm missing out on some great secret that all secretaries should know, about how not to be bored when you have absolutely nothing to do. As a temp I can get away with doing nothing, because there are things I shouldn't do because the job isn't really mine, and things I can't do because I don't know they need to be done, because I'm a temp and nobody tells me things I don't need to know yet. But in a permanent position, after about a year, I find that I've run out of ways to keep myself occupied. Maybe if I were in a part-time position, where there was less of the day to get things done in, or more things to catch up with every morning, I wouldn't have this problem. Unfortunately I want two part-time secretarial jobs even less than I want one full-time one. A part-time job is an excuse for your employer not to give you benefits.
Maybe the fact that I get to that point of being bored at all is a sign of overqualification. I don't know.
Tonight, between the time I get home and the time I leave for project night, I have four things to get done. I wonder if I'll actually do any of them?
Today I feel like a somewhat more worthwhile human being.
The problem with being a secretary in general, I find, is that when you don't have anything to do, you shouldn't be sitting there doing nothing. But you get to a point where everything you can do has been done; you've rearranged/filed/set up everything that needs it, and you've caught up on everything you need to be caught up on, and maybe you're waiting to hear from some people, but you can't magically make that happen, so you really honestly have nothing to do, and you're bored. I feel like I'm missing out on some great secret that all secretaries should know, about how not to be bored when you have absolutely nothing to do. As a temp I can get away with doing nothing, because there are things I shouldn't do because the job isn't really mine, and things I can't do because I don't know they need to be done, because I'm a temp and nobody tells me things I don't need to know yet. But in a permanent position, after about a year, I find that I've run out of ways to keep myself occupied. Maybe if I were in a part-time position, where there was less of the day to get things done in, or more things to catch up with every morning, I wouldn't have this problem. Unfortunately I want two part-time secretarial jobs even less than I want one full-time one. A part-time job is an excuse for your employer not to give you benefits.
Maybe the fact that I get to that point of being bored at all is a sign of overqualification. I don't know.
Tonight, between the time I get home and the time I leave for project night, I have four things to get done. I wonder if I'll actually do any of them?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-14 08:47 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-14 09:18 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-14 09:31 am (UTC)Relax. This is in fact because you are overqualified, and ironically because you are actually doing your work. When I was a secretary, I did my work in about 2 hours, 3 hours tops. I did the same amount of work as the others, despite my typing wpm being less than half theirs. I started to wonder how that could be, so I kept my eyes open.
I saw my coworkers taking 30 minutes to go to the bathroom. Many cups of coffee. I saw people so bad at running the fax or copier that it took literally an hour to process three pages. I saw methods so inefficient I could not have invented them, for looking up information or comparing bills to packing slips. I saw people that didn't know how to mail merge, or print labels from a database, doing such things by hand.
And after a little while, I didn't feel bad at all about websurfing for 5 hours.