I have been a secretary, legal secretary, administrative assistant, executive assistant, typist and any other titles you can think of relating to office work.
I had my first job in 1968 working for a CPA firm. In those days, office ladies wore dresses always, stockings and heels. Oh and not only did we have to type like the wind on the typewriter, but take shorthand as well. My shorthand, even fresh from a college class, relied on memory (mine), because the dictator would be talking faster than I could recommend the strokes for each word. Needless to say, I hated shorthand.
My next job was with a Title company where I typed legal descriptions on punched tape all day long. If you have had to type up legal descriptions of land, you will know that the description can be quite lengthy. The tape looked like this and fixing a typo was a nightmare. Luckily, I've lived long enough that I can't remember what the nightmare looked like!
A boon to secretaries everywhere was the invention of the Selectric Typewriter. It weighed enough to be also used as a boat anchor, but it made work much easier. In the beginning, if you made a typo, you had to insert special paper (think similar to white out), and type the word(s) that you had put in incorrectly.
Eventually, IBM put a correction ribbon (I guess that's what you could call it), and fixing mistakes was so simple. Of course the goal was to not make mistakes in the first place! As with all thing technical, IBM finally redid the Selectric and made it very light. Though it could no longer anchor a boat, it was still a magnificent machine
In my early days as a secretary, there was always a typing test. I was annoyed with these tests because I would always reach the end of the page and have to take the paper out and turn it around, costing me time. I was, and still am, a good typist - even though that's not what clerical women are called anymore. It wasn't uncommon for a boss to dictate a letter, etc. to me while I typed - a very efficient use of time.
Here's one of the things I learned from 40 plus years in an office, is how to pronounce and spell my name when making a call to a company, or a doctor's office. Doing this one simple thing is beneficial to the person answering the phone! I volunteered briefly for a non-profit company and the people who would call in might as well have been speaking Greek, they were that hard to understand.
Since I still remember what it was like to take a call and be unable to understand the person's name. Lawyers, and I suspect doctors, like to know who is calling them. So, this old dog may not remember what I had for breakfast, but I do remember how to make other people's jobs easier.
P
No comments:
Post a Comment
Talk to me people. Please leave me your comments!