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Coach
Pretty sure work is giving me a bedsore...
Why we gotta have resumes, just trust me bro...
Additional Posts in Administrative Assistants
Can anyone here give a referral?
I'm wanting to know what people think is better. Kaiser or ucla health for working as an admin staff. Ucla seems to have good pay from what I see on the job descriptions but kaiser only shows pay grade. Ucla has pension and a raise it seems every year. But I was alao told kaiser offers a dollar each year as a raise. I want a place I can grown and stsy Long term. Any one have any insight on kaiser and what they offered.UCLA Health Kaiser Permanente
Wearing to work today
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🤣😂🤣I know you are making this up! There isn’t an assistant out there that has absolutely nothing to do when their boss is not in the office!!!!
Mentor
Are there a few things I can do? Of course. But I don't have 40 hours worth of work to do. I'm very good at my job and I don't have a backlog of things to do in general.
Sounds like you are very efficient & get things done! I love it! Honestly, I hardly ever have anything to do. Sometimes I read a book. I go for a walk. I catch up on my personal calendar, pay bills, make phone calls I need to make, etc. My bosses don't mind as I've asked for things to keep me busier. Our office is quite different, so I've learned to just go with the flow.
You can go into your stakeholders calendars and proactively clear holidays / vacation blocks. Just because the exec is gone doesnt mean others aren't emailing / scheduling meetings that may need your attention. You dont have any expenses to catch up on?
Mentor
Thanks for the suggestions! Sadly I've already all that calendar pre-work for holidays at the beginning of each year and none of them have any PTO currently scheduled beyond this week as well. As for expenses, I do them every Monday so I'll only have a few things that will come through for tomorrow as only one of them traveled last week. It's only about 15 minutes of work ☹️ I may just have to start making RFPs and gathering quotes for an off-site that will occur in Jan 2027, but it gets difficult because the company may go through an acquisition and the numbers for the quote could go up by close to 100 and it's hard to get quotes with such a huge range.
I never had a job where there was nothing to do during working hours. Usually it was quite the opposite.
ButI remember that during my Soviet childhood there were people with exactly that problem. They would read newspapers and solve crossword puzzles. You could also start crocheting or knitting.
Mentor
I definitely crochet, but don't feel like I can do personal things on company time. It's rare that I don't have things to do myself. I ended up having a lot of "team meetings" and sat with some other admin and helped them out a bit.
There is ALWAYS something to do. When things are quieter, one valuable thing to do is to update (or create) a job manual for your position. It's also a great time to review and update the list of specific ways you've added value to the company or saved the company money (so you'll have specific examples to give at performance reviews). Update contact lists. Clear out the deleted folder on your email. Give your work area a good cleaning and use some disinfectant wipes on the office equipment (janitorial services usually keep it pretty minimum). Research more efficient ways to complete your routine tasks. Whatever that task is that always makes you think "there must be a better way to do this", Google some better ways to do that.
Basically, when things are slow, always think about ways to make things better in some way. :-)