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Guest Post Submitted by Chelsea from Textphish

As of today (January 30th, 2009) I was employed by a small construction company as its receptionist and the personal assistant to the operations manager, who, if you’ve been paying attention, you know is just slightly friendlier than the bitch CEO described in the book, “The Devil Wears Prada”. Today is the day I hand in my resignation letter, which you can have the pleasure of reading in my previous journal entry if you’re interested.

I’d like to dedicate a blog post to offering some advice to those managers that have the audacity to treat their secretaries like shit on the bottom of their shoes. I hope that in the future my words will help those with the luxury of a personal assistant/receptionist/secretary. Please take a moment to read them, as I am certain it will save you a lot of pain and suffering in the future.

The first helpful information I have to provide is this: love your secretary. If for instance you have the stupidity to let your secretary into your office, please treat him/her with respect. He/she is not an idiot. They’re trying to do their job in the best way they know how. I’d like to entreat you to speak courteously to your employee, even joke around with them, and let them know that despite the tedious job that they perform for your betterment, they are still human beings. THIS IS IMPORTANT FOR YOU TO REALIZE, especially when you look at porn on the internet daily, using up the company’s time and computer space to speak to thumbnail pictures of ass on your instant messenger program.

The second piece of information I have for you is, keep your promises! When you hire your secretary, if you promise a raise within a certain allotted time, it would be in your best interest to keep that promise, especially when you trust your secretary with certain important information, like your social security number, birthdate, the numbers of your company credit card, and your doctor’s information.

The third tip is this: remain professional. Your secretary wants nothing more than to do his or her job properly, without having to worry about what kind of mood you’re going to be in. If you have a habit of swinging from being friendly and joking one minute to having an outright bitchfest the next, please refrain from taking it out on your employees, especially your secretary. Your secretary, if they’re good at their job, knows where every single sheet of important papers, professional AND personal, and files are located. If they’re good at their job, you won’t know where anything is. You must treat your secretary with the appropriate respect if you want to find anything.

On that note, if you’re the substance-abusing kind of person, it would be best if you kept that kind of information to yourself. While your secretary may not work for you anymore, if you want to keep your job after your secretary has resigned, it would be intelligent not to share with him/her that you frequently purchase illegal substances.

My fourth tip is thus: maintaining a professional relationship with your secretary means that it would probably be best if you did not treat him/her like a janitorial service. Especially when you leave uncounted amounts of personal items in your office, such as insurance cards, medication, records, receipts, socks, shoes, and all manner of things that would be best suited locked in your house, where they belong.

My final piece of information is the following: trust your secretary. Have a professional relationship with them, maintain a healthy, happy atmosphere, and try not to accuse your secretary of lying when he/she says they are either a). too sick to drive or b). snowed in after a devastating ice storm that left over 500,000 people without power until mid-February. Your secretary is a dedicated individual, and wants to keep their job, especially during a time of economic trouble. They honestly would not take time off of work when they have a family to support, neither would they resign unless they had no other choice.

A personal assistant is a valuable asset to any company. They are remarkable people with a penchant for listening when you think they are too stupid to pay attention to your phone calls. If you maintain a healthy relationship with your secretary, there should be absolutely no reason for them to hold any of the incredible lengths of information they’ve gathered against you in any way. However, should you break these cardinal rules I’ve outlined above, there should be no sympathy given to you when you discover that your valuable information has been shared with someone who turned out not to be the drooling idiot you thought them for but a person that loves vengeance as much as they love sex. That person can be anyone, including a sweet-tempered, bespectacled girl that wants only to do her job properly so she can afford to pay her monthly rent. Appearances can be deceiving! Please remember that wolves can indeed come in sheep’s clothing.

I do hope that this information can come as great help to those that are comfortable treating their secretaries like shit. Remember that though you wear the pants in the company, the true power behind the throne is your personal assistant. Love your secretary!