Even though it’s been a very, very long time since I’ve been an admin assistant and I’m more or less established as totally awesome at what I do, I still get all bristly and insulted when people ask me to do things I think are too “adminy”. It’s not that I think the work is beneath me; I’m just afraid of losing the ground I’ve worked hard for and turning into the office bitch. All the weird little things usually fall on my shoulders – and if you’ll excuse the unnecessary horn tooting, I am really good at the weird little things – but the instant I start cheerfully doing everything asked of me because “you’re so much better at it than I am!”, I find myself suddenly responsible for ordering office supplies and cleaning bathrooms and scripting donut routers for helpless people who refuse to learn.

Today, for example, I came into the office to an email asking me to order pizza for the department. My hackles immediately rose and I sent off a snarling IM to the requester’s boss, reminding him that we HAVE an office assistant and she does this sort of thing. He quickly mollified me – we only asked you because you’re so good at it! – and I had to grudgingly admit he was right: I know best what the team wants and how many to order and from where and who is allergic to what and that we have to order at least 1 cheese-only for the vegetarian who hates vegetables. I don’t actually have to do the ordering at all; they just want me to organize it and get someone else to deal with it. I apologized, because there was no reason for me to be so obnoxious about it. I AM good at that sort of thing, even if I don’t want to be – and hey, I get a free lunch out of it; one that is suspiciously free of olives and feta.

I’ve only ever been asked to serve coffee in a meeting ONCE, and I almost exploded. It was during the Dark Time, when the only job I could find in Calgary was as a receptionist for a horrible little train company. It wasn’t out of line that they asked me to do it – I was the friggin’ receptionist, after all – but I resented it so much I almost walked out the door in disgust. I still have nightmares about that place, and that time in my life – I’ve done a lot since then, and I don’t like to be reminded of it.

In the meantime, free pizza! Yay!

.. then again, if I have to spend one more week in this building, I might kill everyone ELSE in two. Fuck it – there is NO WAY IN HELL I am going to wait a year or more before I move. Fuck this place; fuck it right in the left nostril.

(A car alarm went off outside for close to an hour – turned out to belong to one of the new guys in the basement. He went outside to deal with it and on his way back in, got trapped on the stoop by Drunk Betty sqwaking at him from the second floor, so loudly that I could hear her in the bedroom with the TV turned up loud enough so I could hear the movie over the car alarm. Ed finally went downstairs to get the guy to COME THE FUCK INSIDE so Drunk Betty would stop talking at him. I HATE THIS BUILDING SO HARD.)