Dear Reason, A phone call to another assistant to find times for a meeting should be a fairly easy procedure. I call, I say who will be attending, I say what office it will be held at, I ask for times. The assistant I'm talking to should either give me times or call me back with them. This is the way civilized people communicate. However, I have discovered a shockingly large number of assistants that seem to be horrifyingly lazy.
I call them and go through all the pertinent details and they say "Sure, I'll have to check with my boss. Why don't you shoot me over an email with all the details?" BECAUSE I JUST TOLD YOU ALL THE DETAILS. When you are an assistant, have a pen handy. Perhaps some paper. And when other assistants call you to set meetings, TAKE NOTES. It is a waste of everyone's time to go over something on the phone and then put it all in an email. I understand the necessity of email if you are confirming a meeting.....but not setting one. This goes for agents assistants when you are checking availability. You call them with one client and they take the time to spell out their email address, but won't take the time to just tell you. If they don't know the answer, they should write your info down and call you back. I just don't get it. Curious Hi Curious, Well, I certainly understand your plight. Frustrated does not begin to cover the way you must feel when you are setting several meetings a day and you have to go over information again and again for people that are seemingly too lazy to do their job. Here’s the problem – there’s really nothing you can do to change the way they do things. You’re not their boss. You don’t even work in the same office as most of them, and trust me – telling them your thoughts about their work habits is NOT going to create a warm, fuzzy working relationship. So since you can’t change them, it looks like you’ll need to look at the way you handle things. The first suggestion I can make is to try not to sweat the small stuff. But in terms of a concrete solution to your problem, I would also suggest keeping a record of all of these assistant’s email addresses. That way, next time your boss asks you to set a meeting, you don’t even have to pick up the phone to call. You can begin the correspondence with an email, giving them all the pertinent information. You save yourself that extra step of calling and also some frustration in dealing with the imbecile on the other end of the line. A little note for all you assistants out there that participate in this act: Reason is here to tell you that it’s plain and simply annoying. Stop it. If you know that someone is giving you info that you’ll need at a later date, then write it down. And if you’re too lazy to do that, at least save the person on the other end of the phone a bit of trouble by informing them at the beginning of the conversation that you’d prefer correspondence of that sort to come in an email. You’ll make more friends that way. And as everyone in Hollywood knows, it’s all about who your friends are… The Voice of ReasonSend questions to
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