Hi Everyone, I know I just posted about the International Travel;and I want to thank you for the feed back. I shall use it to improve my next go aroundin the travel world. Well, less than two months ago I was hired as the Executive Assistant for the CEO of a large engineering company. Let me first say the CEO just moved to the USA from India and previously the woman doing my job is in India and the Executive Assistant for the President - they both are the co-founders. Now, according to the "plan" my first six weeks which consisted of the boss being away and me not having anyone to train me other than a woman 10 and half hours ahead of me. I was working 4 AM - 10 PM each day seven days aweek and for $30K. (Executive / Personal Assistant). He said to me that over the six weeks when returned that come the first of the year we would start my plans and that by March 1st I would take over complete for the woman in India doing what she did for him as well as all the Admin support / HR Support / and Office Manager for the Vice President in the US.  This last trip to the UK which I partial planned ran into some problems. Some was my fault and other was literally out of my control as I did not have all the information and I asked him for it, the woman in India, and emailed all parties I could for assistance. No luck. Then his he was arressted in another country his Visa had expired. I researched everything he ever gave me and I had no involvment in his Visa the woman in India did. I ran errands for him and his family. I worked almost around the clock. Yesterday upon his return he looked at me and told me that there was no point in moving forward that out of a scale of 1 - 10 coming to speed I was at a 2. I proved my work even with the errors that were and were not my fault in the  last trip. He then looked at me and said the US office budget would not support my addition. The Vice President said there is nothing he can do to keep me but will give me this week paid severence; my two weeks vacation I am entitled too based on the company policy. And a personal and professional letter of recommendation. He expressed that the boss has unreasonable expectations and has run many people out of the office. I am not the first. Either way, I have never been fired from a job. And to be fired for things that were beyond my power I am having a tough time with. How do you bounce back? (Thanks for listening to me vent)

There are a good portion of appointments international where Individuals are met and I have to rely on either cell phone numbers or email to sync the appointment. Often an alternate location is set up to meet.

It can be very confusing at times.  I am working on trying to find at times maybe the best questions that I can ask my boss or my co-worker in the other location (over seas) so that I can obtain all required information.

I am looking for advice and assistance in making Intrenational meetings and travel arrangements. My new boss travels internationally. My issues and mistakes are in not being familiar in how to search the web for information on hotels, what car rental companies best serve that area and finding address information for directions. There are many times when I have little information to go on. Any advice on trip planning, meeting planning in this instance would be great! Thanks in advance.

Edited by burpatricia on 17/01/07 04:25 PM.

I recently made a major change in my employment. I went from being an Executive Administrative Assistant for the owner of a "small" company to being the Executive Assistant to the co-founder/CEO of a major company. However, the money is the same and the majority of the work is similar. Here is my need for advice. The advertised position for this title was between 30-42K - depending on education and experience. While I possess all the job skills over 10 years but now am in a new playing field without the formal education. I received the low end of the scale. I am not complaining in that sense as the position is what I wanted and the benefits are much better from where I left. However, what I want to know is that 6 months from now or a year from now what is the good marking point to discuss money? I want to give myself time to settle in - time to prove myself to the company and so forth. What do all of you think? (By the way - I am continuing my education and plan on being certified through IAAP by the end of next year.)

Well, someone who sounds a lot like me - it is mind boggling that we say we are going to go on vacation - but we are somehow attached to staying connected.

Last, year I finally went on vacation with my husband for a week and I did NOT call the office for the first time ever! It was wonderful - and then the guilt kicked in when I returned because as you can imagine - there were some fires to put out -

I understand where you are coming from but will just leave you with this - the few fires I had to put out were well worth spending the afternoons on the beach and forgetting about life for awhile.

Play! You deserve it - and if you have to or feel the need - you can always tell your boss that if he needs anything that is URGENT - to call you or leave you a message and you can deal with it either before you start your day or end your day so that you have time to RELAX! Good Luck!

Patricia B. :0)

How do you suggest approaching my supervisor with issues about changes that have been made to my position - without me knowing it - rather I walk into a situation and find out that I no longer have the ability to solve the problem and it was another person who changed the protocal and I had no clue? This has happened on a few occassions and I let it slide - but today was the breaking point. The person who changed them had no authority as they are not my supervisor nor do I report the them. Any suggestions on how to approach my supervisor without sounding bitter or upset at the changes?

The one thing that I love most about  my job is that even though I have my "daily tasks/ routine" that there is always something new that comes up and I am adding to my skills and abilities. With that in mind - I love that I have found a position that I can grow in and a company that is growing and taking me with it.  Almost on a daily basis my boss thanks me for the work that I do for her and her company. She has put faith and trust in me to create new policies and procedures in how the office should run and daily office routines put into place. When I started working for her we worked from home and got together twice a week for meetings - early spring last year we moved into the office. Now, we are growing and expanding and my new tasks are to put the office in shape and into a fine running ship. I hope each of you has a job that you love and recognizes the hard work you do - Enjoy your day on 4/26/06 - and I want to thank all of you - for being a place to ask for support and guidance - I admire all that you do.

Patricia

Susan,

Congrats! Way to go and Happy Birthday! I am sure that you will do fine - just give it some time to adjust and you will get the hang on things without a doubt.

And, like all of us - you have a network of support that will get through it all without hesitation.

Best of Luck!

P.B.

Hi,  Each month I have to sit in on the conference call for the programming and tech support staff - it has nothing to do with my - however, I am like you supposed to take notes.  I created an outline of the time and topics to be discussed. I mentioned to my boss that if we had a general out line of the month's support call then if we emailed to all managers involved prior to the meeting that they could put their notes and feed back on it - then on the call I could go through it and make sure that all topics were discussed add any notes and then email to everyone.  Not sure if something similar can be done to help you out - but it is just an idea.

Patricia

I want to thank everyone for their points on this subject both the negative and the positive. I thought very hard about my decisions. And in a small company of under 10 and we are in two different states it makes email and instant messaging the primary communication methods.

The part that upset me about what this person did was this: The monitoring of email is YES reading it and handling what can be dealt with and making notes, etc for what could not be handled. HOWEVER, in saying that our email system is NOT set up to open emails into a display box you have to double click them - and second the paystub issue - those emails are sent with a PDF format - there fore it was not like someone accidently read an email when they double clicked it - she had to double click the emai and then download the pdf file and then open it - all actions at any point she could have stopped.

Finally, I am not at all ashamed or uncomfortable with my decision - and I knew when I spoke up that she ran the risk of being fired. I had to make a judgement call on my ethics and my job as the description for which I was hired to do - AND I did that.

I am also thankful that there is a place here that I can get feedback of all kinds back that is what this whole post was for - so see what others would have done - but at the end of the day I can sleep with this and I would do it again if someone breeched company policy and then stated it to me - ultimately putting myself and my position with the company at risk.

In conclusion, I am proud of myself for making the right choice even though I knew the end result could cause discomfort and someone losing their job because of their own actions. She was infact fired - and after from what I was told - "begging" for her job back - she was allowed to stay on a probationary period and under very strict guidelines. As far as our "friendship" outside of work even though we are 3000 miles apart - I lost it as I knew I would - and it is true if she was a friend to begin with she would NOT have put me in that position. As far as our work relationship - again relying mostly on text messages and emails it is ok.  Thank you all again for all your comments and points of view. I will take everything all have said as a learning experience and keep it with me so in the future at any company if this situation ever comes my way I can stop and think again what I would do . . . . . the same thing.

Thanks everyone for your feedback. I am comfortable in doing the right thing by myself and then the company and my boss. I thank everyone for their point of views.

Susan,

I personally dislike the most is when we do our "mass mailings" for tradeshow season - about 5000 pieces of mail that I am the lucky one to stick the labels and stamps on - occassionally my boss will send it out - but then the fun begins - when the old addresses come back - I have to go in one by one into the database and edit / remove the name, etc........ drives me nutty!

I am fortunate though that tradeshow season runs - October - March for our mailings - ! :0) -  Filing isn't so bad as we are 80% electronic - but keeping my online files clean can be time consuming!

Enjoy your day! :0)

Patricia

Hi Everyone,

I would like some feedback on an uncomfortable situation that I encountered. Our corporate office is in Massachusetts - our tech support office is in Montana - we communicate alot via email and instant message - I am some what friendly with one of the tech girls - however, this particular tech girl was monitoring email for the tech manager while she was away - she admitted to me that she opened the email with everyone's pay stubs and was livid to find out the new tech person's pay rate. I advised her to NOT do it again. However, today I did mention to the bookkeeper that on days that the tech manager is out (which I will let her know) NOT to forward paystubs that day - as someone has gone through them - my boss over heard part of the conversation and I being obligated by my values and respect for my boss - my position and my ethics - explained to my boss what had happened. I don't feel bad for informing the owner of the "breech" so to speak - but I feel uncomfortable that the tech girl who she and I have a good relationship - it will no longer be that way - I know in my gut I did the right thing - but boy was it uncomfortable to see the look on the bookkeeper's face and on my bosses face to know someone knowingly opened the email and looked - the subject line is always "confidential - paystubs" when sent by the bookkeeper. Any advice or suggestions on how to handle the upcoming confrontation that the tech girl is going to give to me?

Susan,

I wish you the best of luck - and just remember good things come to those who wait - and it does sound promising - ! Keep us posted!

Patty :0)

Thanks for the advice - I have been trying to go through them - ! I will let ya know how it goes! :0)