Thank you, Jess and Lems, for replying so quickly.  I gave the information to the secretary actually making the travel arrangements and she was very happy with it.  (I'm not making the actual arrangements; she just asked me to help her with finding out the section of London our guy is headed to 'cause she's a bit overwhelmed for the moment.  Fortunately I knew right where to go - this site is the best!)

Thanks again -

Colleen in Las Vegas

Would someone be able to tell me what section of London Basinghall Street is in?  I.E., West End, East End, etc.  (The address is number 55.)  Someone from our office will be traveling there shortly and we need to let the travel agent know the section so she can book a hotel close by.  Thanks so much for your help!

Colleen in Las Vegas

(Glad my login is working - I couldn't log in for the longest time but it seems to have corrected itself - yay!)

I'm sure y'all remember the old "I just need the serial number for your copier" scam - the one where, if you give out that number you receive a load of un-asked for toner and a huge bill.  The other day I received a call that makes me think the same old scam is still going on but with a new twist.  The caller identified himself by name right away but didn't give a company.  He didn't ask to speak to anyone in particular and when I asked him who he was calling for, he said something to the effect that he didn't need to speak to anyone in particular, he just needed to know the number for the ink we used in our printer.  I started to say something to the effect that we don't have a printer in the office (not true of course) but the words that actually came out of my mouth were, "Oh.  No.  No, you don't."  Then I hung up.

You know, I'm 39 years old and I still haven't mastered the art of saying an unembellished "no" and meaning it.  I'm sure many of you can understand that, because it's a problem common to women - we're discouraged from saying "no" at an early age and encouraged to be accomodating as much as humanly possible (if not more so).  I wasn't rude to this man, I didn't slam the phone down, I just gave him a polite no and gently hung up the phone.  It's an uncommon feeling for me and I like it - two days later, I'm still riding on that "no".  Isn't that silly?

Anyway, just wanted to alert everyone that there seems to be a new scam (or an old one with a twist) going around.  Maybe this guy had a legitimate reason to know what kind of ink we use, but I don't really think so.

Colleen in Las Vegas

I agree that it's helpful to identify yourself and your company right away.  People are more likely to be cooperative when they know right away that you have a legitimate reason for wanting this information.

I've had to do a similar project two times - once for an economic development group that was associated with the local chamber of commerce and once for an architectural firm.  The first was a major pain in the butt for everyone concerned because there was a whole list of questions to be answered, not just name and address, and the second was probably an easier task than you've got since I was calling only town and city governments for contact information.  They usually had a sheet with all the information on it that they faxed to me.  My sympathies because, though it looks like an easy job on the surface I know it's not - largely thanks to telemarketers who use the "updating our data base" approach to try to get information people just don't want them to have.  Is it possible to spread this job out over a period of time so that you only have to do it for a small part of each day?

Colleen

I'm curious as to how many of you keep a work diary (you know, the notebook where you write down everything you do each day, things your boss said that he/she might contradict him/herself about later, how much time you have to spend unjamming the copier, etc.) and if you've ever found it to make a difference such as during a dispute or at review/raise time.

I almost always keep a work diary (not at this job but this job has been unique in many ways) but it's mostly for me since I've never known it to be useful in a practical way.  At good jobs where everything runs smoothly, I've never needed it and at jobs from hell (I've had a few in the past 21 years!) they didn't make a difference.  (At one job, my boss saw me making notes in my notebook and asked what I was doing.  When I told her that I was keep track of what I accomplished during the day and making a to-do list for the next day, she told me not to, since it was a waste of time.  That turned out to be a job from hell.  Perhaps that conversation at the beginning of my tenure there should've been a big red flag!  A couple of years ago, I was laid off from a very nice job and though I had my journal with me at that meeting - I didn't know it was a layoff meeting and thought it was going to be my annual review - it never came into play there, either.  That was the place where, when they had to cut the budget, they laid off me, someone in accounting, and a third professional rather than let any interns go.  And their interns weren't cheap - they hired them in at full time for just a $1.00 less an hour than they hired in their admins.  Does anyone else think that's weird?)

I'd love to hear y'all's experiences with work diaries, especially if they've made a positive difference in a work situation.  (But it you've had negative experiences with them, vent away.)

Colleen

Thanks, everyone; I knew I'd get great advice from all of you!

Colleen (still hanging in there!)

A variation of a tickle file that I like is, instead of having files labeled A-Z, have files labeled 1-31 and 12 other files labeled January-December.  When you receive something (e.g. a request for mailing labels for a mailing going out in two weeks - amd wouldn't such forethought be lovely!), determine when you'll need to actually begin working on that project and file the request in the file for that day.  (So if you receive the mailing label request on the 3rd but know you won't need to begin working on them till, say, the 10th, put them in the file labled "10".)  If it's something you won't need till the next month, file it in the file for the month you'll need it.   (E.g., you receive the monthly state sales tax form for September on the 26th of September but it's not due till the 31st of October, file in the file labeled "October".)  Each morning, check your file for that particular day.  If you prefer, check it the day before during the last half hour of the day and put everything in your "to do" tray.  If you reach the end of the day with some tasks not finished, put them in the file for the next day (or back in the "to do" tray - the system is reasonably flexible).  Near the end of the month, pull the items for the next month and put them in the appropriate daily files.

A good way to handle recurring tasks with a tickle file is to write each task down, with the due date, on a separate piece of paper and put them in the appropriate daily file.  Don't even bother with the monthly file for them - just pull the reminder on the appropriate day, put it in your "to do" tray and when it's done, place it back in the file you pulled it from and it's ready for the next month.  (If it's a quarterly or annual task, then you'd probably want to put it in one of the monthly, rather than one of the daily, files.)

I've found that a small, portable hanging file frame - I have a sturdy plastic one that coordinates with my other desk accessories - setting on my desk works better for me than a tickle file in a drawer because, like you, I tend to forget about things that are shut away in a drawer.  In conjunction with the tickle file, an "in" tray, a "to do today" tray, and a "finished" tray, as well as one of those A-Z bound books to sort filing and hold it till I file it help me stay organized and help keep my desk top pretty uncluttered.

Colleen

Hi all.  It looks like next week will be my (and every else here) last week at this job.  The business is broke and unless the boss wins a sweepstakes this weekend, there doesn't seem to be any way to rescue it.  (If this sounds familiar to anyone, it is - we were in the same boat this time last year and really thought the shop would go under.  Things improved after the new year and it looked like the business would be saved.  This year, though, it's much worse and the things that worked last year - a layoff, cutting my hours nearly in half for three months, and a weeklong shut-down - won't do the trick this time.)

When I'm interviewing, it's easy to answer the question "why are you leaving your current position?"  "The business is closing."  My question is, if you were in my position, how would you answer if the interviewer wanted you to elaborate on that?  It hasn't happened yet, but some people are nosy and I'd like to have some answers on hand if it does happen.  The real answer is "because my boss is really stupid when it comes to managing money but he won't give up that control to anyone else, plus he sunk a lot of the shop's money into a new business of his and the shop will never get repaid, plus my boss refused to pay the Yellow Pages bill because he thought it was too high, so we had no advertising".  Obviously, that answer is completely inappropriate and won't give a favorable impression to any prospective employers and I won't be using it!

If someone asks why the business is closing, is it appropriate to say it went broke?  Is there a better way to phrase that?  Suppose an interviewer is curious as to why the business went under?  How would you address this situation if it occured?

On to better things (I hope) -

Colleen in Las Vegas
(who will really miss being in a one-person office, but won't miss a bit wondering each week where payroll will come from)

Don't know if it's really an odd job but it certainly qualifies as the most boring one I've ever had, bar none.  We're talking please give me a gun so I can shoot myself boring.  I sat at a microfilm camera for eight hours a day and ran documents through it, slowly (so they wouldn't jam), one at a time.  For four bucks an hour.  Second job (after McDonald's) right out of college.  It was 1983 and I'd left without a degree at a time when even degreed people weren't able to find well-paying jobs, so I didn't complain out loud.  But I hated every minute of it, all four months!

Also, one time I worked in a plant nursery, picking and packing plant roots.  Dirty work - my nails never did get clean and (pardon the grossness) when I blew my nose at the end of the day, the Kleenex would be black.  Ick.

When I lived in Texas, I worked for a company that wrote and published educational materials for Christian schools and homeschools - all self-study work.  Part of my job required reading and working through each individual workbook as if I were a student.  That was actually pretty fun, and when I made it through 12th grade physics, I was rather pleased with myself, since it required greater mathematical skills than I thought possible for me.  I couldn't go back and do the same work now (15 years later) without a lot of review, but was pleased to know that I could do something I'd thought beyond me.

Fun thread!  Next?

Thanks!  I may take you up on that sometime!

I do agree with Chevygirl, though, that "being the office" is a wonderful way to work.  It has it's own unique forms of stress, but I've found that the pros outway the cons (and if you knew some of the situations I find myself in working for this particular person - who couldn't care less about things like OSHA, etc. - you'd know that was saying a lot!).

As far as the odd letter from the payroll company - not long after I posted Friday, I received a call from a supervisor in their customer service department.  She told me that I was correct, in that the information is not required, rather it's a request that we can comply with or not as we choose.  She said the letter they'd sent out was poorly worded and when she read it Friday, it raised questions of her own.  (I'm guessing whoever drafted it didn't get final approval on it before sending it out, perhaps.)  She also informed me that in four states (New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusets, and one other New England state - can't recall which offhand) gender information is required from each employer.  Getting it from everyone just makes it easier to keep up their database.

Colleen in Nevada

Just a short update.  I called the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the gentleman I spoke with had no idea what I was talking about.  He told me that the the BLS doesn't require information about the gender of an employer's employees and that the only reason they'd be requesting it is if the employer was taking part in a voluntary survey.  (We're not.)  I sent a short note the to payroll company telling them (very nicely - you all know how we do it!) that the information in the letter hadn't sounded right to me, so I'd called the BLS, repeated what the BLS had told me, and said that I was sure they wouldn't send out misinformation on purpose so they might want to check it out.  I'll let y'all know if I hear back from them about this issue.

As far as our HR department goes - we don't have one.  We don't have any departments.  We have me.    Any other admins here that are it, as far as the office is concerned?  (We do have more employees that just me - seven - but they're all in the shop.  Boss is out most of the time.  Not a bad arrangement at all!)

Colleen in Las Vegas

Hi everyone!  I don't post often (usually just when I have a question, on rare occasions to comment) but I start each morning here and know if I ever have any questions regarding the AA profession, this is the place to come.

Part of my responsibilities at work is payroll - actually, we use a nationally known payroll  processing company.  Today when I received our paychecks, I also received a letter that states, "As of August 22, 2002, gender will be required for all new employees.  From this date forward, please provide gender, along with the other required new hire information . . . "  They are also requiring that we list the gender of every current employee.  The letter states that this is so they can be in compliance with a requirement of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

This is the weirdest thing I've heard in quite awhile.  Since when does the government need to know how many men and how many women are employed at any given company?  The only time I've ever run into something similar before was when I worked at a construction company that did lots of government jobs.  When a company does construction for the government, it's required to file a report each pay period listing employees by race and gender so the government knows how it's filling its minority quotas.  This doesn't seem like the same thing at all.  This is definitely a form letter which I received and doesn't refer to construction work or government work or any specifics of any kind.

Can anyone fill me in on this?  I know it seems like nothing, but I really don't want to have to do this - it feels intrusive for some reason.  What's next - asking for everyone's race?  I know their are forms that ask people that, but telling is optional.  I always do - I guess because it is optional, it doesn't bother me.  Maybe it's just me that's weird!

Colleen in Las Vegas
where it's hot-hot-hot!

Hi Holly!  They're in Mickleover.  I keep thinking one of them moved to the city of Derby, but I'm not positive.  I do know the rest are in Mickleover and (as far as I know) always have been.

Thanks for the vote of confidence, everyone!  Boss, sadly, is not the type to notice things like Admin Assistants' Day or do anything to acknowledge them if he does notice.  (He did, however, thank me when I stayed on last fall at reduced hours when we thought the company might fold.  I doubt he's every thanked anyone before, so that's something!  And I'm full-time again.)

Have a great weekend, everyone.

PS - Holly, was it you that said you were from Derby?  I have cousins there.

Thanks, everyone, for your suggestions.  It may be difficult for you to believe, but the fact is, neither my boss nor the foreman (we're a custom cabinetry shop with 7 shop employees and me in the office) care one bit about OSHA, either federal or state, requirements.  I will get little or no help from them, because they both believe and have stated outright that this is stupid, the rules are stupid, no one follows the rules, it's a waste of time, etc., etc.  Remember, they've both known for six months that these things needed to be done, never said a word to me about them, and never did anything about them themselves.  Boss is not beneath shutting down the company himself if he gets too fed up with stuff.  He's had many profitable companies in the past and he knows he can start another one if he needs to.  (As a matter of fact, he recently has, in a completely different industry.)  We did get some information from Nevada OSHA awhile back; I'll take another look at it.  (Since I had no idea we had to do anything other than pay a fine, I glanced through it and filed it when we received it.  Fortunately, I knew better than to throw it away.)  To make things just a little more complicated, when we were visited by the inspector, we had over 11 employees, now we don't.  Some of the things we were cited on may no longer apply to us, but I don't think that means we can't respond to them.  This morning, boss said not to worry about this stuff till we get another letter.  I'd rather get it done, because once it's done our file will be closed and if we get it done in time, it'll save us money (no more fines!).

Not worried or scared about dealing with the OSHA people (the inspector was nice enough while he was here and just doing his job), but some days I find it very frustrating to deal with boss and foreman!