Steve Frey
Today, April 25, is a special day! Did you remember Administrative Professionals’ Day today?
If you are reading this during the day and forgot, you still have a chance. If you are reading this after work and you didn’t remember your administrative assistant, well, you’re in BIG trouble!
Administrative assistants, as they are now often called, were known as secretaries at one time (and some still are).
However, it was decided that administrative assistant was a better descriptor, and whether you call yours a secretary, an office coordinator, an administrative professional or an administrative assistant, they keep the office running like a well-oiled machine!
Administrative assistants have all different kinds of education, but no matter what their background, they all possess an amazing set of professional skills.
First, they have to be organized, especially if you (the “you” here referring to the person who thinks he’s in charge.) are not.
If they aren’t there and you have to find a file, it is often like feeling your way along a path you’ve never been on in the dark, uphill.
However, when they get back in the office, they can walk over to the correct file cabinet, immediately find the file, and give it to you with their eyes closed.
The same thing happens with a computer file. What did we save that under? Before you can finish “under,” the page you need pops up on the computer with a ding. Yeah, they know technology.
They are masters of organization, from schedules to files to budgets—to everything. How they do it is a mystery, but they know where everything is or can be found and make it look oh, so easy.
Next, they are master psychologists. They can soothe the angriest client and make it possible for you to have half a chance to reason with him by the time he gets to you.
It’s a combination of just the right word, an unflappable sense of composure, and a friendliness that can melt the hardest heart.
They are even better on the phone. Assistants listen, acknowledge, suggest, and recap, all in the most patient, friendliest voice possible, and before you know it, they are sharing their best methods for keeping deer out of a garden.
They can even work their magic on you. If you’re concerned about a meeting or a problem customer, their friendly smile and positive attitude can rub off on you, and just like that, the issue doesn’t seem quite as big as the Draper Mountain it did a few minutes before.
Administrative assistants have the grammar and spelling skills of a master linguist. They can show you where you have shone for shown or here for hear or some other textual mishap.
They can also be an excellent sounding board to see if your brilliant dissertation on the subject at hand is actually comprehensible to anyone else.
Of course, they are master mechanics. Who else can take a copier apart and put it back to working order with no leftover parts faster than they can?
You jiggle the paper tray and can’t get a misfeed to stop while they can merely apply the right “wham” to the tray with precisely the right angle and pressure to make it work perfectly.
They are incredible magicians. Whenever you need supplies or materials, they suddenly appear. When you look in the supply closet, you see shelves that are relatively empty.
Somehow, the assistant can come through with whatever you need, in the color you want. There must be a hidden door leading to a cavern filled with materials somewhere, all completely organized and neatly labeled, but the assistant isn’t telling.
Administrative assistants are ambidextrous, skilled athletes who can shred a memo with one hand, sign for the UPS guy with the other, kick the file cabinet shut with a foot, and talk to that angry customer with the phone clutched between jaw and shoulder, all at the same time.
They have incredible time management skills. Your day may seem like a series of tornadoes moving from one imagined crisis to another while they calmly answer phones, greet people, fix that darn copier, and still have the report you need ready an hour before you said you needed it. They never lose their cool, and “pshaw” at meeting deadlines.
An administrative assistant at a school has an additional skill set. At any moment they have to be a skilled EMT for the nurse, a counselor for the upset 2nd grader (those psychological skills again!), the referee who keeps a couple of kids apart while they’re waiting to see the principal, and a kind voice and smile for the teacher with that deer-in-the-headlights stare at the end of a hectic day.
In addition to all of this, assistants have to have the professional confidentiality of a minister. Yeah, what happens in Vegas may stay in Vegas, but for the administrative assistant, what happens in the office (or on the phone, or in an email, etc.), stays in the office.
They don’t share with others how Mrs. Smith came in and had a meltdown about the color of the napkins for the 6th-grade moving-up ceremony, or how Mr. Jones ranted about the lateness of an order he forgot to even order. She just keeps it all to herself.
These are only a few of the many skills and tasks an administrative assistant employs minute to minute during the day.
If you are lucky enough to have a great administrative professional, think about all he or she does, how loyal she is, how efficient, and how she makes you look good through her incredible organizational skills and positive attitude.
Then, instead of just thanking her today, show your appreciation regularly throughout the year.
You may make those big decisions, but she keeps the operation from coming off the rails almost every day in one way or another.
To all those administrative assistants across the NRV, thanks for all you do. We know you accomplish more for every person in the organization than anyone can possibly comprehend, and we are eternally grateful that you are you!
Steve Frey is a writer and CEO of Ascendant Educational Services based in Radford.
