The Boss Who Never Relaxed

I worked at a PI firm in Philly. My position was assistant to the office manager. The business was largely process service from local attorney, who are always late and missing deadlines or providing too little lead-time for a job. I got hired as a last stitch effort to lighten the office manager’s workload. It also happens that the office manager was a workaholic with a marriage on it last leg due to his excessive albeit unnecessary office hours. The work was very simple data entry at best, and the occasional couriering to City Hall, the work flow was light to medium, and though the office was small anybody with strong organizational skills could easily navigate the filing system. And the office had a good vibe. The only problem was the office manager still insisted on working late  into the night on projects that could wait until the next day, because we received them late and they couldn’t be sent out until the next afternoon.

Frequently the OM would get into a tizzy over something that was beyond our control and largely due to our client’s delays. “Not to worry,” I’d tell him, “ the client knows that they gave us this filling after City Hall closed on a Friday. We can send it out on Monday.” I’m not a very panicky person by nature, but the OM’s world would come crashing down on him anytime something predictable happened. Every time the phone rang he would get this look of panic and terror. I think on some level my constant state of calm made him even more neurotic. It was as though there weren’t enough people worrying, so he had to worry more. Just about every night as I headed out at quitting time he scrambled for more work to occupy him self, and his wife called daily to ensure he would be home on time. Even though every day I was there I completed a full 8-hour workload with positivity, promptness and proficiency. 3 months in and I was let go. The moral of the story is you can give a neurotic workaholic an assistant but you can’t make him relax. Que sera sera and on to the next bigger thing!

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