Ill admit it up front. I was a lousy secretary. It wasnt for the lack of trying. It was just because it was a bad fit for me, but it took me years of being a secretary to convince myself.

Other secretaries in my department could organize circles around me. They could manage a 55-line telephone with one hand, word-process a memo with the other, and do the filing with their feet. They didnt freak out when their boss dumped a three-day project on their desk with orders to have it ready in an hour. They knew when everyones birthdays were, and they remembered to change the water in the flower vase on their desk.

Not me. My typing looked as if it were done by foot, calls I answered ended up on hold for years, and the filing was perpetually 6 months behind. I freaked out when my boss came within two miles of my desk. I forgot my own birthday, and my flowers were always straining desperately towards other, more nurturing, secretaries.

My real problem was that I was always the victim of the Pile Syndrome. If youre a secretary or if you have any kind of paper-pushing job, you know what I mean.

Youre working on the A project, and youre trying to be focused, even though your phone keeps ringing and the gal at the desk next to you wants to discuss her nephews foot fungus. (By the way, its illegal for secretaries to let their phones go to voicemail. Look it up yourself: Bylaw 213, Section 3, Paragraph A.)

Your boss comes up to you and says, How are you coming along on the B project? I know I asked for it tomorrow but could I have it for my meeting in an hour?

You know it will only take 10 minutes to finish off the B project, so theres no reason for to put the A project away. You put the B project right on top of the A project on your desk and set to work.

The phone rings. The man on the other end is having an emergency that for some reason you are the only person on the planet who can solve. This is part of your job too customer service. In fact, the company devotes a lot of lip service to this priority. So this becomes C project, which has to happen right now. But youre really trying to whip through the B project so you can get back to the A project, which is what youre REALLY working on anyway. So theres no need to put the B or the A projects away. You put the C project right on top.

The day ends while youre working on the P or the Q project, and you can barely see over the top of the pile. Everyone is upset with you because you didnt get projects A through N finished.

Time management gurus would have a field day with that one. They INSIST that you must put away whatever youre not working on, and focus ONLY on what youre working on. Okay, theyre right. How many of them were secretaries? Lets take a poll.

In between (and usually during) all of these projects, I was expected to schedule meetings for people who only had enough space on their calendar to inhale once. When I reported to my boss that the first mutually available opening for the people he wanted to meet with was Tuesday of 2009, my boss would say No, try again and see if you can get it for Monday of next week.

I was also expected to keep track of how many paper clips the office went through in a month, whom to call when the toilet in the mens room stopped up, which travel agent could find the best rates, all of my bosss computer passwords, whose turn it was to clean out the office refrigerator, which of my bosss clients preferred communication by email, which had blue eyes, which drove a domestic vehicle, which had a toddler who was teething, and which required a wheat-free meal at luncheons.

I also spent a lot of time filing defensively. My boss would accuse me of keeping too much stuff, and that I needed to only keep what was important. Then he would come up to me and ask for that piece of paper he used as a coaster in that meeting in 1995 surely I remember the one the one when that lady with the short hair made a presentation. Then he would hover over my desk while I painstakingly went through every file in my possession trying to find that piece of paper.

There must be a word that combines panic and apathy. Thats the state I finally reached. I was in a constant state of panic over maintaining control over the minutia of my job, but I was apathetic because I genuinely and sincerely really didnt give a hoot. Nothing I did created any meaningful progress for myself. I filed; someone yanked the file out again, used it, and dumped it back on my desk. I typed a memo for someone else, and someone else got the credit for a great idea. I was a member of the team when it suited the department, but when it didnt suit them, I was expected to remember my place.

To all of you who are efficient and wonderful secretaries, my hat is off to you. Those of us who are lousy at it really need people like you in the world.

How many secretaries does it take to change a light bulb? None. She calls maintenance and they do it. Or, if shes like me, she pretends not to notice until someone else takes care of it.