The A E I O & U of Office Managing

When our great and efficient office manager left six months ago, some of her jobs came to me. Many of them immediately and other just recently. My new job duties consist of A, E, I, O and U tasks. A - Answer the phone. The goal is to get it on the first ring and not make our customer wait. I have a console of three phones with sixty lines, but this blackie seemed appropriate to post.

E - E-pays. These are companies we do work for that want us to submit our invoices through their online payment system. They've been piling up for six months (100+ now) until we're sending collection letters, even though an invoice was never submitted. Enter - ME! My boss told me two weeks ago, it was 'my baby'. What seemed like a monumental job of 'cracking the code' to each company, and many phone calls/emails later has now been tamed to a few.

I - Itemizing. Scrutinizing the freight, uniforms & office supplies bills to make sure all items are correctly priced. also, I keep track, of the paper supply and the vending machine man, not too hard.

O - Office Supplies. The workroom always was stocked magically, until I was in charge, now many of the cubicles are nearly empty. The product seems to disappear overnight. My keener eye takes notice to add a few pens, sticky notes and such whenever there's a need. It's not a good idea to empty the whole box at once on the shelf but to let them think, we are low and maybe they won't take as many.

U - Uniforms. We changed vendors in July. What a challenge to keep everyone happy. First they brought 40 of the X, XX, XXX sizes and no XS & S. We had chemists without coats and others with five each. Today our supplier finally dropped of some new anti-fatigue mats, after six weeks of going the rounds with them. They blamed it on their shipper. I am learning to count the product myself and not trust the other guy with all his promises. Change is always a challenge.

Now I know more of what it's like to manage an office. What an eye opener! And those are just a few things that make me think I'm going crazy.