It's Only the Beginning

I’m an analytical writer. Most of my job consists of looking things up and then writing long reports about them. It does not require much interaction with my co-workers. The only people I actually need to speak with are the director, the members of an expert panel to whom I present my reports, and the administrative assistant. I’ve never had any problems functioning in office settings in the past, but something new came up today.¹ I had forgotten to include some data with all the reports that got mailed out to the panel yesterday and needed to send them out as soon as possible, so I asked the assistant to do it. I’ve never needed anything from the assistant until this point, and it felt weird to ask her to do shit for me for a couple of reasons:

1. Until this job, I was always at the bottom of the office hierarchy. Even when I wasn’t necessarily someone’s bitch, I had to do all of my clerical/administrative tasks myself. There simply wasn’t anyone willing/able to do it for me. In other jobs, I was the office bitch and had to deal with many people’s constant idiocy. In a work setting, it’s new and different for me to have someone else do things that I really could do myself but prefer not to.

2. The assistant is older than me, not by much, but she is. I’m guessing around 26-27ish compared to my age of less than 26-27ish. This isn’t really a significant difference, but it is there. I’ve always been raised to respect/defer to people older than me, no matter what the age difference, and have generally held by this rule for most people.² It’s strange to have rank over someone older than me. It just feels awkward.

I’ve never been the boss of anyone before this, but I should get used to it soon enough. It’s just weird to have someone to do shit for me. The worst thing that could happen is my going on a huge power trip, which would lead to having the assistant do things like pick up my dry-cleaning or systematically take over small, defenseless countries so as to build up my base(es) of operations in a bid to take over the world. If this pans out, I’ll soon rule a world in which all people’s job title is “Assistant to the Glorious Supreme Sovereign.”

And to think this will all begin with having someone do my mailing.


¹ It’s not problematic, just new.
² This is unless we get to be friends, in which case I’ll expose them to my particular brand of sarcasm/cynicism/haterade.