Office Quandries
Peter Rachleff
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PUNCHING OUT page 1 of 2 | |||||
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Weekly Answers to Office Quandries |
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Professor Peter Rachleff |
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 I am a paralegal with a variety of tasks and very busy office. I am
buried in work and cannot get our secretary to help me in the smallest
way. She is gone for a smoke break every hour for ten to fifteen
minutes, she reads paperbacks, does her nails and pays her bills at her
desk. She is assigned to support the group of five. When I asked the
boss about her refusal to help me, he said "she does what I need her to
do" and he does not see a problem with her performance. The secretary
and I are both long-time employees, in our late fifties. How can I gain
assistance from this secretary?
Northwest
Despite the fuzziness of the lines of authority, both you and the secretary work for the lawyers in your office. They hire you (and can fire you), set your pay, give you your work assignments, and call you from one project to another as they "need" your services and talents. The only way to get anywhere in such a setting is to make common cause with everyone else in the office who is in the same structural situation. In your case, you must approach that secretary who has been giving you a hard time, talk with her about your common situation and your shared interests and needs, and work out a common strategy in relationship to your real problems -- the lawyers. |
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Paralegals, like many workers in today's workplace, find themselves
in between some higher-ups and some other workers who are "below" them
in the corporate hierarchy. It can be difficult to live in this
in-between place, hard to get work done, and, even more, hard to feel
good about yourself and secure in your own identity. Your situation
flows out of this modern workplace structure.