You Mean You Don’t Have A Clone?

My very first job is as a temporary office assistant in the admin area of a non-profit that offers therapeutic services to disadvantaged kids. My job is sort of tacked on to the existing business structure, so while I work primarily with the office staff, technically, I report directly to the chief financial officer. In retrospect, I’m pretty sure this is partially nepotism at work — my mom is also at a high level in the company, though I do not work for her directly — but in this case, it works out for the company as a whole.

I have worked at this job for a couple of summers with no complaints; it is all pretty standard data entry and filing duties. But then, one summer, I am told that they have a new office manager. My mom mentions that they have had some complaints from the other staff about her, but it has been brushed off thus far because they feel that the old manager was too lax with the workers and they were simply upset that they didn’t get to slack off as much anymore.

This office is actually a converted residential home, so one of the oddities of it is that the “archive” — files pertaining to patients who no longer come to the practice but have to be retained for a number of years for legal reasons — is actually out in a converted garage. I am working on purging the archive of aged-out files, which means I am out in the garage for a lot of my shift most of the time.

On my first day with the new manager, I come in, do the daily filing of documents that have been dropped off by therapists throughout yesterday, and then go out to the garage to work on my project. About fifteen minutes in, the inter-office phone rings and I answer.

Office Manager: “[My Name], you’re supposed to finish the current filing before you work on the archives.”

Me: *Confused* “I’m sorry, I thought I’d finished all of it.”

Office Manager: “Well, I’m looking at the inbox and it has paperwork in it still. Get it done.”

Me: “Okay, I’ll be right back in.”

I go back inside and find about three sheets of paper in the inbox. I think that when I picked up the stack I simply missed a few pages at the bottom, so I file them without thinking much of it and go back out to the garage. Another fifteen minutes pass, and I get another call.

Office Manager: “This is unacceptable, [My Name]! When I tell you to do something, I expect it to be done!”

I’m now thoroughly confused and a bit worried, as I’ve never been yelled at at this job before. 

Me: “What do you mean? I came in and filed what was left in the inbox! I’m sure of it!”

Office Manager: “Then why are there still papers in it?! Get back in here and do your job right now!”

I’m terrified of getting fired, so I bustle back inside and, sure enough, there are papers in the inbox. But this time, I look at the dates on them. All of them are dated today, which means the therapists dropped them off while I was outside, which is normal operating procedure. Normally, I would not be filing these papers until tomorrow. I point this out to the office manager.

Office Manager: “I don’t care how you used to do things. I’m in charge now, and you will keep this inbox empty or there will be consequences!”

Even at sixteen, I know this is an absurd expectation. I’d never make any headway on the archiving project if I had to drop it every five minutes to run in and check the inbox, and even if I did do that, then I might still miss a page or two just due to timing. Never having had a problem like this, I go back to the archive and call the CFO in tears. I have NEVER called my direct boss before this, but I don’t know what to do to appease this woman, and I was told that if I ever had any problems I should call her.

I explain my dilemma and tell her I’m sorry but I don’t see how I’m supposed to purge the archive and know what’s going on in another building entirely at the same time. She calms me down, tells me she’ll call the office manager to get this straightened out, and instructs me to just work on the archives. I don’t know what is said, but the office manager leaves me alone about the inbox from then on.

This isn’t the last issue I have with this woman. She often makes ludicrous requests, including expecting me, a small sixteen-year-old girl, to move a couch that was placed on a stack of boxes that reaches taller than I do, in order to rifle through said boxes for a file I already know isn’t there. I solve that one by simply hiding in the archive for fifteen minutes and then telling the office manager the file isn’t in the boxes. She never questions why the couch is still on top of them.

Every incident is reported either directly to the CFO or to my mom, who I’m sure relays it to her in turn. When I come back to the office the next summer, the office manager is gone. I’m pretty sure that they started taking the complaints of the staff more seriously after I started joining in — nepotism used for good, for once, I suppose!