My boss asks me to do annoying admin tasks, please tell me if I need to get over this/what to do

[Anonymous]

There has to be a way for computers and AI to do your job and save you the aggravation and the taxpayers tons of money.

[Anonymous]

Seriously. How long does it take to print a calendar? But if it is a ongoing problem, figure out a system to take care of it. Come up with a schedule for when things need to be done, and have the supervisor give it to the new Admin. End of story. Management goes up, as well as down. Somehow I think you'd rather complain.

If you wanted to be regarded as a stellar employee, you'd print out an extra calendar when you're printing your materials for the meeting and hand it to your supervisor when he walks in to ask you to do it. I always found it satisfying when the Boss ran into my office in a panic because he forgot something, and I could coolly say "It's already done." FWIW, when the Boss retired, he strongly recommended me for the job, and I got it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:We have one admin, but she works for the big boss. We just hired a new admin, but nobody knows exactly what his job is or who he works for. I might encourage my boss to ask him to do stuff once we figure out what his role is here.

My boss oversees my unit and another unit, but I am his most immediate subordinate, since my subordinates are two levels below him. I don't know how he handles the other unit since we don't do anything with them.

Is this OP above? Figure out who the admin is for your boss. Go talk to your boss and say, when you have admin tasks like x and y, go ask "person" to do it. Say that you have the impression tasks types of a,b. He isn't going to change regarding wanting admin help or last minute admin help. What you can try to change is WHO he asks.

Just curious, is he super old? Or maybe he doesn't have daughters?

[Anonymous]

Are you young? Is this your first real job? Your supervisor asked you to print out a calendar. Print the damn calendar and stop whining about it.

[Anonymous]

OP, is your supervisor good to you? All of us struggle with different things. I have ADD; maybe he does too.

[Anonymous]

So your ego is bruised because you feel admin work is beneath you?

[Anonymous]

Are you female and he's male? He wouldn't be asking this of male colleagues. Are you his only direct report? As your colleagues if they're getting work like this.

I was only a GS 9 when this happened, but we had a similar issue. I was in a large office with 5 divisions. The youngest woman in each division got tapped to do all the filing and records for that office. Except some of us were lawyers and had masters degrees, but our male coworkers weren't tapped to ever do any filing. In my case I have my masters, was paid more, and was older than another man in my office who didn't have to do filing. It was essentially 2 months of filing for a huge litigation case, so we raised hell. We were told that "guys just aren't any good at filing."

[Anonymous]

Just how old are you? When you boss tells you to do something, you do it. You know there is a little something called yearly evaluation which he/she will write for you? Please tell us how old are you? I really want to know if this is generational thing. I am mid 40s and it would never occur to me to complain about being told what to do, with the exception if I was told to clean his toiler and I am clearly not the maid.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just how old are you? When you boss tells you to do something, you do it. You know there is a little something called yearly evaluation which he/she will write for you? Please tell us how old are you? I really want to know if this is generational thing. I am mid 40s and it would never occur to me to complain about being told what to do, with the exception if I was told to clean his toiler and I am clearly not the maid.

Sorry no. If you're not an admin, you don't have to do admin tasks. In the federal government there are next to no admins. You shouldn't have to get your boss coffee because they asks for it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just how old are you? When you boss tells you to do something, you do it. You know there is a little something called yearly evaluation which he/she will write for you? Please tell us how old are you? I really want to know if this is generational thing. I am mid 40s and it would never occur to me to complain about being told what to do, with the exception if I was told to clean his toiler and I am clearly not the maid.

Sorry no. If you're not an admin, you don't have to do admin tasks. In the federal government there are next to no admins. You shouldn't have to get your boss coffee because they asks for it.

But he didn't ask her to bring him coffee, did he? He asked that she prints his calendar. How spoiled and entitled can you be? Why don't we ever see a gardener going on how he won't trim the edges because he was hired only to mow the lawn?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just how old are you? When you boss tells you to do something, you do it. You know there is a little something called yearly evaluation which he/she will write for you? Please tell us how old are you? I really want to know if this is generational thing. I am mid 40s and it would never occur to me to complain about being told what to do, with the exception if I was told to clean his toiler and I am clearly not the maid.

Sorry no. If you're not an admin, you don't have to do admin tasks. In the federal government there are next to no admins. You shouldn't have to get your boss coffee because they asks for it.

Getting coffee is entirely different than printing documents for a meeting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Just how old are you? When you boss tells you to do something, you do it. You know there is a little something called yearly evaluation which he/she will write for you? Please tell us how old are you? I really want to know if this is generational thing. I am mid 40s and it would never occur to me to complain about being told what to do, with the exception if I was told to clean his toiler and I am clearly not the maid.

Are you a man or a woman?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Just how old are you? When you boss tells you to do something, you do it. You know there is a little something called yearly evaluation which he/she will write for you? Please tell us how old are you? I really want to know if this is generational thing. I am mid 40s and it would never occur to me to complain about being told what to do, with the exception if I was told to clean his toiler and I am clearly not the maid.

Sorry no. If you're not an admin, you don't have to do admin tasks. In the federal government there are next to no admins. You shouldn't have to get your boss coffee because they asks for it.

But he didn't ask her to bring him coffee, did he? He asked that she prints his calendar. How spoiled and entitled can you be? Why don't we ever see a gardener going on how he won't trim the edges because he was hired only to mow the lawn?

I don't understand your comparison. Gardeners do actually charge more to trim the edges! lol. If you hire for just mowing, you don't get the edges done too.

[Anonymous]

One reason I've done well in my career is by being nice to my bosses.

Call it brown nosing, call it sucking up. But this person has power over you, your career, your compensation.... The smart move is to help him with a smile.

I help my boss when he has a problem getting his $10 reimbursement from the health insurer. And I do it enthusiastically. My boss just gave me a 6% raise. I am not poisoning that well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Omg. Just print that stupid stuff. While not a fed I am an SVP and do Admin work all the time for my EVP. We are a team and this is how we are more efficient and function better.

+1. you already printed out the calendar. just make a copy of it for him. and going forward, print out 2. and start pushing some more administrative tasks down to your staff.
if he were asking you to organize ALL of his materials, it would be a different story.
being organized and helping my bosses is PART of what helped me rise to upper management- basically being a reliable, organized, knowledgeable resource