Hey, Boss: Nothing Personal
Question: A question has arisen among the administrative support staff at the law firm where I work. We are frequently required to handle personal chores for law partners and other employees. We’re required to take people’s personal mail, including their bills, to the post office. I even have to handle mail from their spouses and children, including their Christmas cards. It isn’t a big problem, but I wonder what would happen if someone’s mortgage payment never made it to the bank.
Through the years, I’ve grown increasingly resentful of doing personal work for employers and others. I’m not even sure I can articulate why I dislike it so much. I’m usually on the low end of the office hierarchy, and it makes me feel even more lowly. When I work, I want to advance the goals of the organization, not the personal goals of the other employees.
Answer: This is a case on which opinions differ.
Rick Stroud, spokesman for the Kansas City, Mo.-based International Assn. of Administrative Professionals, clearly shares the reader’s sentiments.
“She has her priorities straight,” he said. “You work for the corporation, not for the individual.”
But Cynthia Lively, the group’s president and administrative assistant to the headmaster at the Eaglebrook School in Deerfield, Mass., said, “I do many of those things [for the boss] myself, and I’ve never felt put upon.”
It also depends on the circumstances. If the lawyers work 16-hour days, generating an avalanche of income that supports the rest of the firm, it’s easier to understand that they may need to lean on support staff to handle personal chores--assuming the other workers aren’t equally time-strapped. How people are treated also plays a role. If they are treated as inferiors, being asked to perform personal errands is more likely to make them feel servile than pleased to serve.
There’s a generational issue here as well. Stroud, 40, thinks it’s passe for executives to expect administrative assistants to help with personal chores, unless they were hired specifically as personal assistants and charged with those duties.
“There’s definitely been a trend of the last 25 years away from doing personal errands” that aren’t part of a worker’s official job description, Stroud said. “There are pockets of the old-school mentality, and as we approach the new millennium, it should decrease.”
Lively, 54, sees the attitudinal changes among younger workers as unfortunate.
“A lot of [people] have an 8-to-5 mind-set, and they don’t want to do anything above and beyond that unless they are paid for it,” she said.
But both urged the writer to speak up, rallying co-workers on the issue if possible, taking it to the human resources department if necessary.
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Q: I was born in Southeast Asia and came to this country in 1981. I became a U.S. citizen about 10 years ago. I work in the publications department of a state government agency, where I’m the only minority.
Lately I’ve been subjected to discrimination and harassment because of my accent. I’ve been told that if I cannot change my accent, my career might be adversely affected. Can they legally do this? What can I do?
A: The reader, whose accent was noticeable but was easy to understand during a recent interview, raises a good question at a time of heavy immigration.
Obviously, good English-language communication skills are essential for some jobs, and employers must be confident that workers can adequately perform their duties. But a growing number of workers believe their language differences have become a pretext for discrimination. The number of workers making language-based allegations to the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission rose from 77 cases in fiscal 1996 to 243 in fiscal 1999, the agency reports.
Attorney John Rowe, the EEOC’s district director in Chicago, said language-discrimination complaints are common in some government agencies.
“Progressive employers don’t make that mistake, particularly large multinationals that want their sales forces to be international,” he said.
Rowe said several national-origin discrimination complaints over the last year were settled quickly after his office explained the issues to employers. While employers have a right to place workers in jobs they can perform well, those using language issues to discriminate unfairly against immigrant workers may face legal trouble, he said.
Many foreign-born workers who came to the United States as adults struggle mightily to improve their accents, either to improve their job prospects or to better assimilate, said Bill Crawford, a senior instructor at Georgetown University who specializes in teaching English as a foreign language. Private accent training--as distinct from grammar or vocabulary instruction--can help, particularly if a trained linguist helps students focus on specific sounds and intonations. It can take three to six months of intensive training, he said.
Kirsten Downey Grimsley can be reached via e-mail at downeyk@washpost.com.
