Thursday, April 23, 1998

Review: Will The Real Boss Please Stand Up?

George-Anne Fay

AMACOM, $19.95, 181 pages.

By SCOTT SCHOLTEN / Staff Writer

Proper credit is rarely awarded secretaries. One day a year, they are treated to flowers and a dinner date with the boss. That, writes Fay, is too much like a dating ritual and poor way to acknowledge the exertions associated with insulating the boss from office minutiae.

Fay's solution?

Write a book emphasizing good secretarial work habits that will eventually lead to management positions.

A peculiar way to improve the professional lives of secretaries that like being secretaries.

And who would want to give up that power? Fay writes secretaries (known as executive assistants these days) often hold positions of power middle management could only dream about.

Pit bull secretaries are the bread and butter of office management; managers entrust their most valuable commodity, time, to their assistants. As managers' eyes and ears, secretaries' importance, indeed influence, ought not be underestimated.

Fay's suggestions would make secretaries more effective -- and formidable.

Yet the book is a valuable read for clerical and non-clerical alike.

Fay's suggested improvements in work habits are, if not new, refreshingly encapsulated. The book energizes by emphasizing how powerful the reader could be. Fay is successful on this account.

The book's strongest suit is its emphasis that employees' services are a commodity that companies buy. Employees should remember there is no need to discount their services either through lean pay packages or inconsiderate supervisors. There are likely other more appropriatly compensating job opportunities out there. Do not feel trapped, Fay writes.

Cutesy references to "Me, Inc." (you are a company unto yourself) or "Me University" (one should keep abreast of corporate gossip as well as industry trends) are condescending yet tolerable.

A values and image reassesment, Fay writes, is in order for secretaries with designs on advancement. Everyone could benefit from this.

Quite possibly, a better title for this book would have been, "How Not To Be A Doormat."