Office life: love it or hate it, but you can’t get away from it. Want to laugh at the lighter side of your secretarial career? Then this is the book for you! Discover the essential art of looking busy, how to love your photocopier and carve a path through the stationery jungle. Learn to deal with terrifying tasks, tricky travel arrangements and the horrors of networking. And do it all with a smile on your face and success on your CV. Happy typing!
Targeted Age Group:: 18 and over
What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
I’ve been a secretary all my working life, and have learnt a lot about what to do – and what not to do! I wanted to give helpful advice to my fellow secretaries and office workers in a light-hearted way.
Book Sample
A long time ago when I was a very young secretary, I had no idea that looking busy was an essential part of the job and – in my innocence – it took me a while to catch on. For a start, the Art of Looking Busy wasn’t part of the modules on offer at my state-of-the-art Secretarial Course. This was a great disappointment as really it’s been the skill that’s been the most valuable in all my secretarial years. Well, that and the ability to mend the photocopier, but more of this later.
I first really understood the importance of looking busy when a secretary colleague of mine told me that when she’d started working in her first role, she’d always taken a book with her so she could read it whenever there was nothing to do. She went on to say how surprised she was that this always irritated her boss who promptly gave her far more work than she could reasonably handle. And then had nothing much to do himself …
I laughed as I thought she was joking (a) at so openly reading a book whilst she was supposed to be working; and (b) at the whole part about being surprised at the boss’s reaction. She wasn’t joking. Understandably perhaps, our brief friendship didn’t last long, but the story did give me a key insight into how to survive the modern office.
To be frank, office life –and in particular secretarial office life – is all done by smoke and mirrors, and the delicate but vital art of looking busy is no different. This applies to life at your desk and life in the wider office environment. So here are a few tips to get you through your day still looking busy:
1. Make sure there’s always a decent-sized pile of paperwork on your desk. It doesn’t have to be anything you actually need to work on, though it ought to have some vague link with your job.
2. Move paper piles around on your desk so it looks as if something is happening. In the office, you’re never truly alone and you never know who’s watching you …
3. Do the filing, or the archiving. You know, that stuff you never do, or hardly ever anyway. It’ll gain you essential Secretary Points at the very least, as well as getting you away from your desk (always vital). Plus it makes you look super-busy and very noble.
4. File the filing you’ve already filed, either paper filing or the online variety. The same goes for the archiving you’ve already archived. However, I would recommend the paper variety in both cases, as it prevents people from finding you to give you more work.
5. Have a secret supply of meaningless typing to fall back on so that you at least sound busy to the unwary ear approaching the sanctuary of your desk. At one previous job, when things were extremely dull and I’d already archived the archiving I’d archived the day before, I used to copy-type passages from the office business newspaper so it would sound like I was doing something useful. Sometimes I even learnt something but thankfully I never remembered it for long …
About the Author:
Anne Brooke lives in Surrey, UK. She is a multi-published author in a variety of genres, including gay erotic romance, fantasy, comedy, thrillers, biblical fiction and the occasional chicklit novel. Her fiction has been shortlisted for the Harry Bowling Prize (for novels set in London) and the Royal Literary Fund Scheme.
When not writing, she spends time in the garden attempting to differentiate between flowers and weeds. Occasionally, she can also be found in the kitchen making cakes. Every now and again, they are edible.
Links to Purchase eBooks
Link To Buy Tales from the Typeface: A Secretary’s Life and How to Survive It On Amazon
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