Message #75828

[Katie G]

I "sort of" have cover.  We have three admins in the front office, each with their own areas of expertise.  Events and external relations is one, bills and payments are another, and then me, the asst. to the AVP, in which I'm less "specialized" but handle things of a more delicate/confidential matter, along with more traditional duties like calendar, travel, messages, meeting setup, etc.

When we take vacation, we each try to have as many loose ends tied up as possible.  Anything that might be hanging in limbo at 5:00  on our last day, we leave notes for each other about -- who to call, where to send a form once it's been signed, who's waiting for something to come in the mail... We also leave on our outgoing voicemails that we are away, and encourage people to either leave a message or zero out to our main number if immediate assistance is needed.  So far, we really haven't had a disaster due to one of us being out.

Of course, being in the US, I don't think many folks, except at the most senior levels, tend to take more than one week off at a time nowadays.  Heck, even our big boss is rarely gone for more than a week and a half.  I really don't know what we'd do if someone were to take their three week's vacation all at once.