Some of you know that I have other blogs I write besides just this one. I try to keep my WordPress blog up to date on a more regular basis than this one (in fact, most of what I write here ends up there as well), but I know some of you prefer to read here or have taken this feed, so I try to write here as well. I recently consented to Google Adsense. I don't expect to earn great amounts of money this way, but who knows, maybe it will add up to something.
Today, I wanted to talk about the difference between being an administrative assistant and being a team member. As most of you know, I was an administrative assistant to the Bishop for this area a few years ago. I really enjoyed working for Dave, and I was sad to see him retire, even though I had left the job before he did.
My job was partially as one of his administrative assistants but also partially as a system administrator/webmaster for the diocese. As his administrative assistant, I handled some of his correspondence (from dictation), I took phone calls and emails for him, I handled filing, that sort of thing. Basically, I kept him aware of what was going on in the diocese of which he needed to be aware. I did that because he couldn't be everywhere at all times, but also because I had skills in areas he didn't. He wasn't skilled in database administration, so he couldn't be expected to keep himself up to date on the status of our database. He wasn't skilled in web design and development, so he couldn't be expected to keep himself up to date on the needs of the web server. Do you see where I am going with this? If there was a problem with the web server, it was my job to fix it and handle whatever issues came about from it. No one held him accountable for downtime of the website. That fell squarely on my shoulders.
Fast forward to where I work now. I am on a team (of three) webmasters. Tuesday, I found a problem with one of the websites. I met with one of my co-workers to see if he was getting the same error I was getting (he was) whihc led me to determine that the issue was that the index page was just missing. No explanation as to why it was gone. He and I looked at the backup index file. It was still valid, so he transferred it to the necessary location (since we were at his desk), and the problem was solved.
Now, I had been gone (on bereavement leave) for 5 days, so it could have been messed up just for a few minutes or hours, or it could have happened right after I left the previous Wednesday (it was working earlier on Wednesday.) There is no way for me to know at this point unless I can find someone with access to log files that may or may not exist. Yesterday, my supervisor was upset with me because I didn't notify him that there had been a problem. So he is yelling at me over the phone about this. Well, excuse me, but he was AT WORK while I was away on bereavement. He had the opportunity (along with my other co-worker), to check that website every day to make sure that it was functioning. In fact, he could have checked it THAT MORNING to see if it was working. But, apparently, it didn't occur to either of them to do that. So, since *I* happened to do my job to find and fix an error, I get in trouble for not *telling him* that I did my job. Gee, I guess trying to get 3 days work done in the first 4 hours I was back made it slip my mind (oh and the other co-worker physically sits right next to my supervisor while I am on the other side of the building). Why didn't my co-worker mention it to my supervisor when he got back from lunch?
I am not my supervisor's adminstrative assistant. It is not my job to keep him informed about things that are outside his ability. He should have the skills to check the website and determine whether it is working or not. I am not his assistant. I am an IT professional who is here to work on specific projects. And it ticks me off that he is yelling at me when it was just as much HIS job to look to see that the site was up and operational. Sure, he may get calls that the site was down, and he will not have known about it, and he may get in trouble for that. But that isn't my fault. I wasn't even here. He will end up getting less of those *because I fixed it* (regardless of whether I told him) than if I didn't fix it. Had I not noticed it and fixed it, how many complaints would he have gotten?
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