Happy Sec . . . er, Admin . . . oh, just take the roses

Today is one of those prickly holidays. This article in Slate touches on a few of the difficulties of The Holiday Formerly Known as Secretaries Day. Who qualifies? And what constitutes an appropriate gift? On the first problem:

One Secretaries Day, a former advertising-sales assistant and co-worker of mine got lovely plants from colleagues who rushed to point out that they'd gotten her a gift even though she wasn't really a secretary. She got the impression they thought she might be offended by being lumped in with the admin staff. The holiday forces workers, like it or not, to evaluate how they stack up. Mail-room guy, copy clerk, typist, receptionist, administrative secretary, executive assistant—are you low enough on the totem pole to merit a gift? Or are you too low?

And on the second:

Some bosses feel compelled to take their secretary, assistant, or whoever out to lunch on Secretaries Day. It's a nice gesture, but who wants to sit through that awkward meal? Anyone who has seen the Curb Your Enthusiasm episode in which Larry David takes his maid on a squirm-worthy lunch date at his country club knows the potential disaster of forced boss-employee conviviality.

My office was, until recently, a classroom. Now, thanks to the imposition of several portable dividers, none of them reaching to the ceiling, the converted space holds the dean, myself and another chair, the office manager to the dean, the office manager the other chair and I share, my associate chair, and the other chair's intern, and two receptionist/assistants. My desk sits in the center of the room, surrounded on three sides by dividers that lean sideways and, when upright, come up to my chest.

This is, of course, an absurd working environment for a college of 10,000 students. I was never one to hold out for the corner office, but as a chair I listen all day to complaints from students and sensitive matters with faculty, and when I really need not to be overheard (for, say, accusations of harassment) my only recourse is to take either my visitor or my cellphone out to the parking lot. Otherwise, all nine of us can hold a conversation in our normal speaking voices without getting up from our seats.

The only good thing about our working environment is the sense of conviviality it has bred. All of us feel underappreciated, shoved into some no-man's land that startles our visitors; and all of us have chosen to feed off our resentment by seeking understanding between one another. Sensing our esprit de corps, the dean has pushed the notion of us as her inner circle, and when a real crisis hit our college earlier in the semester, it was we she chose to confide in, to the exclusion of, say, the other chairs. The office manager I share with the other chair is one I have worked with for 11 years; she and I share nothing in common save following the Astros, but she is marvelously good at her job. Furthermore, as my duties often have me travelling from campus to campus throughout the day, she is a rock of stability.

Sill, as this day approaches, I have a bit of foreboding. Who gets invited, and who does the inviting? Our solution is that the Dean, the other chair and I spring for the rest of the gang: the associate chair, the intern, receptionists, and so forth. Of course, we leave out the campus receptionists, the work study students, and the adjunct faculty, on the grounds that you have to draw the line somewhere.

The second issue has to do with where we go. My office manager is an intensely private woman in her sixties. As she has turned down all lunch invitations extended by anyone over the past decade-plus--all but two per year, her birthday and today--I suspect that she views this as even more of an obligation that I do. But to point that out out loud--ick.

So we have lunch. But I eschew flowers. An Easterner by birth, in the great Eastern tradition, I give money. Money for everyone. At least that part is easy and (I hope) appreciated.