In May or June of 2006 I had originally interviewed for the position of Office Manager at my last job (that I was recently fired from). Two of the three people that interviewed me didn’t think I could do the job, so they hired someone from an agency to do the job. I was then hired as her “assistant” in August.

Right away I knew it was a quirky place to work. Relaxed work environment, but everyone was on edge, concerned about projects, deadlines and new people in the office. I warm up to people slowly, so wasn’t sure what to make of the people or the office environment at that time.

One of the tasks John, the boss, had assigned to the Office Manager at the time, was a File Numbering Renaming. He wanted all the client folders to be be renamed to start with a number to make it easier to locate things. Not just hard copy folders, but electronic ones also. Needless to say, she didn’t think much of this plan at all, but he pushed it and she “presented” it as an idea at a staff meeting. Part of the reason she was fired, was that she didn’t know enough about that project to submit it as an idea in the meeting.

He also wanted her to use the Tasks in Microsoft Outlook, and institute a system for the entire staff to use them. Not having sufficient Outlook training, she wasn’t sure how to do this; and to be honest, none of the staff will ever use MS Outlook Tasks, which really gets on his nerves.

Well, anyway, she couldn’t deflect enough of his Micromanagement to remain sane, and she didn’t want to do anything he wanted to do. So they fired her. I guess there are probably other reasons, I don’t personally think she was qualified to be an office manager, she didn’t seem to know how to do it.

I took over the last two weeks in November, and if you ask John and Jim, probably took over a month or so before that too.