buzzword: the combo job

In case you hadn’t heard, the US economy isn’t doing so great these days. A lot of companies are trying to cut costs by combining positions. However, if you’re an assistant you know this is pretty common practice for people at the lower end of the totem pole. Just go through the classifieds: many assistant positions are actually “receptionist/assistant,” “office manager/assistant,” “administrative assistant/executive assistant,” and the like. Why is this so common, when a company is willing to shell out salaries for four separate Vice Presidents of Finance but not for one more (poorly-paid) admin person to ease the workload?

The truth is, the people who make these HR decisions often haven’t been assistants or don’t understand how much an assistant is responsible for. When I was a receptionist back in the day, the CEO of the company saved money on hiring temps by just forcing me to do all the work. In his brain, “receptionist” equaled “sits at a desk and looks pretty all day.” In my brain, “receptionist” equaled “deal with two loads of mail a day, answer and reroute all the calls, order food for all the executives separately, sign for that FedEx package while simultaneously calling back the repair guy about that leak in the bathroom,” and a whole lot more. The CEO assumed I had nothing else to do all day and therefore he was a management genius for coming up with the ‘brilliant’ idea of assigning temp work to me.

Do you have a combo job, or have you had one in the past? Tell us your overworked, overscheduled, and overstressed stories.