Office Angels
Office Angels: bringing comfort and joy to our workspace We all know how it is sometimes. Even before you’ve come into the office, your Blackberry has been buzzing away since the moment you switched it on, you’ve got 15 emails and you’ve already spoken to and pacified at least 3 anxious candidates and clients – and it’s not even 9’oclock! You then come in, turn on the PC and attempt to trawl through a barrage of emails, all of which need to be actioned, when there goes the phone on your desk, with another concerned caller who you just don’t have time to deal with right now. You ask your PA or Receptionist to politely fob them off. The phone goes again. This time you really do need to take that call! Attempting to scrawl down the key details of the call, you forage around on your desk for pen and paper. Not finding it, you motion frantically to said PA/Receptionist to bring you what you need, which they promptly do. Call over, you’ve taken notes and have all the info you need. Now you can get on with your day, call that previous concerned caller back, and go through your emails…but oh no! The system crashes, so straightaway you ask the PA/Receptionist to contact IT Support to get things sorted. You use that time whilst your technology is being sorted to print off some CVs but, running out of paper, you ask that person to fill the printer whilst you have to take another call. You get back to your desk and it’s all sorted – you can now carry on as you mean to go on. So far, so familiar. But have you remembered to thank that office angel who helped you before, making your life easier whilst you ran around in a flap? In our mania of frenetic activity, we sometimes take for granted the people who enable the smooth running of our offices, who do the essential things like buy milk and teabags so we can get our caffeine fix in the morning (and throughout the day!), who book our hotels, travel and client lunches, who put more paper in the printer, who replenish the stationery cupboard, who field constant sales calls all day, who labour for hours updating our admin, databases and processes, and who by doing these things generally make our jobs (and therefore lives!) easier and more pleasant. It’s about time we thought about and thanked those who keep the wheels oiled, and made sure they know how much we appreciate them. So, office angels, here’s to you. Thank you for helping out and making our office environments pleasant and workable. Just don’t let that halo slip…or sprout wings and fly away from us!
