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I Hate Administrative Work

The Ordinary Man
3 min readOct 19, 2021

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My career has been mostly spent in the office, and when you work in an office you’re going to have to do some admin at some point. I used to want to do admin because from the outside it looks like quite a relaxing job. But it’s actually a steaming pile of bullshit, and I can see why it’s almost always fobbed off on the lowest-ranked employees.

What Even Is Admin?

Here are a couple of definitions of admin I found on Google:

“The process or activity of running a business, organization, etc.”

“Administration is the area of a company’s operations that focuses on supporting the company’s operations.”

So the definition of admin is pretty loose and some companies take full advantage of this. Where there is vagueness, there is a shady business reaping the benefits.

I’ve seen admin job descriptions with cleaning the office snuck in. Is that necessary, or are they trying to save money on cleaners?

I got a job in a small office that said they needed someone to do admin desperately. What I actually ended up doing was fetch papers from the printer. The printer was 5 steps away from the person printing. It was literally my only job, and they were for some reason confused as to why I wasn’t bubbly and upbeat about getting the role.

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