bloggedy blog: the personal weblog of a music lover and aging punk wannabe

:: Thursday, April 17, 2003 ::

Maundy Thursday
This post has nothing to do with the link above. My wife's boss met with her yesterday to tell her that their company is broke. (Which came as no surprise to Dy, since she's the company's secretary/bookkeeper/payroll administrator/office manager. She'd been trying to get him to reel in expenses for months.) He asked if she could go a couple of weeks without pay. She told him she could, and that she would even take a cut in pay. She called me yesterday afternoon, voice trembling, and said, "I kinda lost my job."

My wife is one of the best secretaries, bookkeepers and office administrators around. Her training is from the old school -- taking dictation, shorthand and all that -- but she's kept up with the times and taught herself the rudiments of website design and some graphic arts. (She manages and updates the company's website -- or did, anyway.) By the time she graduated high school, she had already decided that she wanted to pursue a career as a secretary. And she has. She worked for years for an insurance claims office that was downsized during a reorganization a dozen years ago, then went to work for a few years at the university. She hated it here. Too much bureaucracy. She much preferred a small-business environment. So when the guy who is her current boss, at the time a Ph.D. candidate in civil engineering at the university, started his own consulting firm a few years ago and asked her to join on, she was eager to do so. She's been working half-time in this position, and loves the extra time she has to piddle in the garden, shop (often for others), and work at our church relief mission. But her boss, though a terrific engineer, hasn't been the best manager. The company in some ways is a victim of its own success. It grew too fast, and he added on more staff than they were able to sustain in the long run.

So yesterday, he laid off two of the firm's three other engineers (one worked part time, the other has a wife expecting their third child), and told Dy (my wife) to take off the rest of the week and come in Monday. She's hurting right now. I would appreciate your prayers for her.

So many of us tie our identity and self-worth to what we do for a living. I know that I do. I am not sure what I would do if my boss were to drop a bomb on me like that. The consolation, perhaps, is that her boss told Dy, "I guess I should recommend that you find another job. But to be honest, if you quit then this business will definitely go under." He relies on Dy a lot.

Next Wednesday, by the way, is Administrative Professionals Day, formerly called Secretary's Day. Another politically correct holiday is upon us. Dy hates the new term. There's nothing the matter with being called a secretary. There's nothing the matter with being a secretary, for that matter. (It's interesting -- to me, at least -- that a PR guy, Harry F. Klemfuss of the ad agency Young and Rubicam, invented the day back in the '50s to encourage more women to become secretaries. Now the politically correct PR people see "secretary" as a demeaning term.)

For any bosses reading this, do my wife a favor and let your secretary know how much you value her contributions. For any secretaries (or administrative professionals) reading this, please know that, as the husband of one fantastic, organized, efficient secretary, I recognize and applaud the things you do, day in and day out, and know the crap you put up with.

:: Andrew 07:16 + ::
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