An unexpected trend has emerged from the ashes of thousands of lay-offs: overburdened secretaries hiring their own secretaries, with their own money.
With the trimming down of so many office staffs, secretaries and administrative assistants are finding themselves saddled with extra work as the duties of the departed are now being heaped on them.
To keep from losing their minds, certain clever secretaries are pooling their financial resources and paying out-of-work secretaries to help with both personal and work-related tasks, thereby relieving the pressure. And these hired "virtual assistants" are able to bring in some much-needed cash in an otherwise bleak job market.
A secretary we'll call Angela and two of her co-workers asked to remain anonymous, because they're concerned that their employer would not approve of them sharing work with an outsider.
"There's the confidentiality issue," Angela says. "I'm pretty sure my firm doesn't want anyone on the outside seeing our internal work product. I don't give anything sensitive to our secretary. And she doesn't care what she's looking at, she just needs to get paid like we all do. Of course, we don't want to get fired over this. But (our assistant) is a friend of mine, and I know I can trust her."
Despite the risks, Angela sees the "secret secretary-to-the-secretaries" solution as being resourceful. She's taking action where her employer can't or won't.
"My firm has a dumb rule about having no part-timers. If we had just one part-time secretary in our office it would make a huge difference to a lot of secretaries. I know (the firm) is trying to cut costs, but if the three of us (secretaries who are sharing a virtual assistant) can get enough money together from our salaries to pay for help, the firm should be able to do the same. But they won't."
"It doesn't make sense that they're willing to pay us extra for overtime, when that same money could probably pay for a part-time person," she added.
"We're not going to suffer just on principle," one of Angela's co-workers said. "It's true the firm should be able to get us a little extra help. But if they won't do it, why shouldn't we take matters into our own hands? I'd rather pay to keep from going out of my mind and be able to see my kids at night instead of being here 'til all hours of the night. If I said, 'I'm not paying out my own money for help on principle, because the firm should do it', I'd still be miserable and overworked. So let's just take control, pay up and be happier."
Another of Angela's co-workers added that "It's not just about the firm's money issues. Sometimes I think the reason we can't get what we need has more to do with being blocked by one stupid person in middle management who's either too stupid to take action or too afraid. If it was up to the managing partner, maybe we'd get a part-time helper. But we'll never get to him because we have to go through this terrible manager who's just not that smart."
So what kind of work do these secretaries-to-the-secretaries get? In the case of Angela's virtual assistant, it's a mix of the professional and the personal.
"Whatever we can farm out," Angela said. "I scan hand-written stuff and document mark-ups and e-mail them to her for typing. I know (one of my co-workers) gets her to make travel arrangements. She took care of a major pain-in-the-ass problem for me with the cable company the other day."
Similarly, across town, an entire office full of secretaries is handing work off to one recently laid-off co-worker at home in Queens. They, too, are on the down-low because of confidentiality issues.
"We know (our hired secretary) isn't going to do anything with the (company)information," Donna told us. "It makes sense for her to be doing the work anyway. She used to work here. She's seen all this stuff before."
Further uptown, two other secretaries, Nora and Rayna, are helping out a recently laid-off co-worker by paying her to run personal errands.
"We're buried in the work left behind when Leslie was fired," Nora said. "We don't leave the office for lunch anymore, and we're constantly staying late."
Until recently, this overworked lifestyle left them feeling like their lives were being lived on a treadmill.
"By the time the weekend comes, all you have time for is the shit you didn't get to do during the week," Rayna complained. "Laundry, go to the supermarket, all that crap. And if you have to make a phone call and be on hold or something, forget it. I don't have time for that at work, and a lot of people don't have hours on the weekend. It's just ridiculous. It's a stressful way to live."
But then Nora and Rayna got wise and started paying their unemployed friend Leslie to take care of personal errands for them, freeing up their evenings and weekends for just plain enjoying life.
"Oh my god, it's made a world of difference," Nora sighed. "It's absolutely worth the money. We have no regrets."
For Leslie, it means much-needed cash-in-hand, and a powerful weapon against inertia.
"If I didn't have things to take care of, I'd be completely depressed, sitting on my couch and stuffing my face," Leslie said. "(Helping Nora and Rayna) gives me a reason to get up every day and I feel good knowing I'm helping my own friends."
Nora and Rayna don't have the same concerns regarding confidentiality, because they chose to keep their noses clean and keep the work they give Leslie personal in nature. Leslie stays busy making phone calls, processing health insurance claims, sorting mail, doing laundry, grocery shopping, and even doing light cleaning.
They are, however, paying Leslie in cash under-the-table, $10 an hour.
The same seems to be true for everyone doing the secret secretary thing -- cash on the sly. But the arrangements differ from one situation to the next.
Donna and her fellow company secretaries -- all twelve of them -- pay their unemployed former co-worker per task, and each secretary takes individual responsibility for paying for the task he or she assigned. Their assistant gets $15 an hour. For any task that falls under an hour, she still gets the full $15.
Angela and company made an entirely different arrangement. They pay their assistant Valerie a flat hourly rate to remain on-call during certain hours -- $5 -- just for the security of knowing she's available. However, when work arises for Valerie, she gets an additional $10 per hour, or $10 per task if the task takes less than a full hour. The secretaries split the $5 on-call fee equally, but individually pony up the extra cash for any tasks they've personally assigned to Valerie.
If you're interested in getting help on the side, and you want an arrangement that's as risk-free as possible, consider keeping your hired hand's duties in the realm of the personal, and ask him or her to sign an Independent Contractor Agreement. When your assistant is an independent contractor, they are responsible for reporting their income to the IRS, and you need not withhold taxes from their pay. However, treating someone as an independent contractor comes with some rules. Get familiar with them on the IRS web site. They're fairly simple rules to comply with, so don't let them discourage you from putting a fellow secretary back to work.
-- Margaret Haney
