Bored? Why should I be bored? When the day is over I have no feeling of accomplishing anything real and worthwhile whatsoever.
You sound like a happy soul.
It's the 'dictating letters' bit ~ do people still do that?
Do you not just email or ~ God forbid ~ type yourself? We know you can do it!
God forbid, indeed!
I don't dictate in person (though have done it on quite rare occasions, if it's a really brief note and I realise I need to write it while I happen to be in my secretary's office). But yes, I do dictate letters regularly (daily, really) using a dictaphone and then give the tape to her to type up. If it's a busy day, I'll even do them in the car, while driving from one workplace to another - that saves me time doing them at the end of the day or leaving them for the next day.
It's SO much faster to dictate than type them myself. I can touch-type, but still, it would take some time to do a letter that's about a side and a half of A4 or so, and then I'd still need to email it to her to prettify the letter by formatting it, putting all the headers, filing it in the right bit of the electronic filing system, etc, etc. Whereas dictating such a letter into a tape takes just a few minutes or so.
Plus, it means I don't need to remember details like who/where exactly I'm sending the letter to, since she can look up the exact name, etc, etc and I can then quickly check that - and everything else - is all correct when she leaves them for me to sign before she sends them out. Much more efficient. She's good enough that I almost never need to correct anything anyway.
... and when you stroll into the office, in your own time, and toss your bowler onto the hatstand (pur-lease tell me you have a hatstand), she is wearing a crisp white shirt, a knee length skirt and ready with the Earl Grey ~ hot.
I wish. No hatstand, and no Moneypenny.
She did bring in a nice chocolate cake the other day though, and has a nice line in silk shawls. So we're getting there....
Seriously though ~ do you not want to read a letter back and re-think your words or actually know who you are corresponding with?
Oh, I do skim-read them very quickly before signing, but only for obvious big mistakes. This is going to sound arrogant, but I've been doing letters for long enough that I don't generally need to rephrase/restructure letters after dictation - I've learnt to hold the facts in my mind while talking into the tape and composing the letter in a flowing but clear fashion. So barring major typos, etc, there's little to correct.
As for not knowing who it's going to, it's usually something like not remembering which GP in a practice, or which lawyer in a chambers, etc, etc, that the client actually belongs to. Since that information is readily available in the electronic notes, there's no need for me to remember it.
It can be also stressful and exhausting, especially when I am on a deadline or I am due to give a lecture or presentation, but I actually work better when I'm under pressure.
I would love the pressure of a proper job ~ other than the creepy massage guy asking where his cheese baguette is.
I need to use my brain ~ this is getting more obvious!
It's over-rated...
Actually, what I mainly find annoying about my job is working for a large organisation, and/or working for a boss. I'm looking forward to working independently in about 18 months time.
And I agree with K'ehlryr that I honestly didn't know anybody (except maybe a way-up-high CEO) dictated letters any more. In the company I work for as well as the sister company that's housed in the same building, a building in which hundreds of people work, I'd guess that MAYbe...4 of them...perhaps has many as 6...dictate their letters. All the rest of us compose our own, though those less talented on the keyboard probably have their administrative assistants pretty their letters up before they go out.
Without typists the health service would almost definitely collapse overnight!
Exactly. The medical world is still totally wedded to dictation. Every time you see someone in clinic, you need to write a letter to the GP, for instance, to update them, which I tend to copy to the client too. Some practices in other parts of the world outsource the typing up of the tapes (or electronic equivalent) to specialist firms, but it's actually more efficient, I think, to do it in house, esp. since you need a secretary anyway to manage appointments, room bookings, field telephone calls, etc, etc.
I've noticed a small trend for some of the more junior doctors to type up their own letters, but this is largely because they're not confident with dictation and the structure of a good letter yet. It is a bit of an art to learn to hold all the relevant information in your mind and still compose the letter in a fluent fashion, and if you're just starting out, it's harder to do this. The first time I tried dictating, I must have spent about 10-15 minutes doing a letter, constantly rewinding and taping over what I'd said!
But once you get good at it, you can dictate a letter in a few minutes, and if I had to type that up myself, it would take much longer, and still need prettifying, so it would actually be a much more inefficient way of getting the letters out.
What a company. I stay longer to do them a favour and they try to work me to the bone before I leave.
They sound a joy to work for. Reminds me of an organisation close to my own work....
Today, I got to stand there and let a customer talk to me like I killed his family of magic sparkling kittens, all because I misheard something he mumbled at me, in a busy, noisy shop during the lunchtime rush. All I had to do was ask him to repeat one portion of what he'd said because I didn't catch it.
The joys of working in a mobile phone shop. I get that people are more attached to their phones than ever now, but stop being so damn precious over them and treating the SAs there like crap.
/rant
I am so glad I finished at one today and now have four days off.
So, I have a question about what mobile phone I should get next.....
In my experience, these days, people usually take the request to repeat themselves as a challenge to go f*ck themselves.
Me: "Do you know what kind of computer experience she has?" "I'm not sure."
