Life In a Fish Bowl

It has been more than a year since I have wanted to start this blog. It has also been more than a year since I began my life in corporate America. Ahh the good life...

I have decided to start a chain of entries about my observations, and experiences as an Administrative Assistant (that is, a secretary), and they will be titled "Life in a Fish Bowl".

"Why's that?" did you ask? Well, it is simple really. I am the admin. assistant, so I sit at the front of the office, I have no proper cubicle, and thus no semblance of privacy. Absolutely everything I do is visible to everyone. And all the looky-lous love it! Anything on my desk is fair game. Please feel free to pick up my personal items. I don't mind, really. No no, I wasn't in the middle of writing a personal email, go ahead and read from over my shoulder, in fact, why don't you just read it aloud so all can hear. And don't worry I hate the concept of personal space, in fact I love it when you come and rearrange the items on my desk. It's like my very own game of hide-n-seek. What fun!

And so it goes...my life up here at the receptionist desk is like a little fish in a fish bowl. No privacy, no personal space, crystal clear glass inviting the world to come and peer into everything I do because they have nothing better to do. Isn't it great!

Like the other day, I had a pile of mortgage industry newspapers on my desk. I was gathering them to send them to another department for a big-wig on another floor to read and pass on when he was threw with them, when a co-worker walks up to drop off some paperwork for me and notices a picture of GW on the front of one of the newspapers.

"Oh is this an old paper?" she says, seconds away from picking the paper up and taking it to her desk.

"No, it isn't a newspaper. It is a mortgage paper " I say half tempted to swat her hand away. Apparently she must have mistaken a newspaper on my desk as hers.

But I can understand, because everyone else in the office seems to confuse my stuff that is in my area as theirs all the time, and so it would make perfect sense to touch, grab and take whatever it is from my desk. Please, help yourself. Don't mind me. I'll just keep swimming around in my fish bowl...