Now I'm a Switchboard Operator!!

Oh no. Tell me this isn't happening. Yesterday I was told to go with one of my co-workers to THE TOWER.... Gads, I thought, "I knew it! They are sending me to the Tower and I'm going to be BEHEADED!!" Actually, the Tower is one of our buildings here that houses the students (the one where in my first week here, I had to walk through the laundromat!).

Anyway, I thought he was taking me over there to learn some new facet of the job.... well, he was..... Only not part of the job that I thought was MY job! He gets me over to the 3rd floor of this building, and we enter a completely different department. He starts yakking to the receptionist, and I hang back, thinking he's just making small talk with her. All of a sudden, she ups and leaves, and he sits down in her reception desk chair! A cold chill went up my spine as I then realized that the job he was going to show me was the RECEPTIONIST JOB! Evidently one of my duties is to also sit in for this receptionist and answer a multiple-line phone (!!!) in a completely different department! Hell, I don't even like answering a one-line phone! I actually sat there dumbfounded for a few minutes before blurting out something to the effect of "What? We are supposed to answer phones??"... My co-worker saw my dismay and tried to appease me that we only did this 'once in a while'... Oh, really? I was afraid to ask what was once in a while.

So now, on top of doing the mail and being a messenger and cutting and pasting, I am to answer phones?!! I was sitting there trying to be a good sport, but inside I was really seething and thinking "what the hell is going on here!".. We started chatting, and I saw a good opportunity to ask him how much word processing he actually does on average. He says he does type some manuscripts ONCE IN A WHILE but that is about all. Oh dear. At this rate, even if I'm going to get to do straightforward typing, all my legal word processing skills are going to go down the drain! They don't do any Powerpoint, legal docs or other state-of-the-art software packages. I don't think they have a clue what a Pleading looks like or what red-lining means!

Then he proceeds to tell me, in trying to make me feel better I suppose, that when he came on board here, he had to do a lot of 'KINDERGARTEN' kind of work like cutting and pasting! He just validated what I have been thinking all along. Achhhhhhh! I'm back in Kindergarten and I don't even get nap time!

Time to go home and suck on my bottle!!