Message #4550

[lioness70]

In my opinion, these go hand-in-hand.  If you don't get respect for the job you do, you'll always be stuck in an admin position.  An admin whose contributions are valued and whose presence is respected gets ahead.  Those who don't get respect from their bosses and peers stay admins (well, you know, we hired her to type, file and copy, and that's about it.  How can we possible expect her to succeed in a high-level job when all she does is type, file and copy???).  Unfortunately, I ran into the latter view at the 4 full-time jobs I held.  It wasn't just me-I never knew one admin who was promoted at any of those jobs.  Usually the reason why was just as I stated above-admin work was not seen as crucial to the company's success, so admins stayed in the same position-some for many years.  If more people saw how admins keep an office running smoothly instead of focusing on the "file, fax and copy" stereotype, more admins would get the respect and promotions they deserve.  But after they're promoted, you get that shortage of good admins that we discussed before, and then you get people trying hard to keep admins as admins because there's too many so-so admins who don't want to be admins...the cycle goes on and on.