This strip didn’t seem that difficult to interpret. In the first panel, he thinks he is asking some random (minor) secretary to make copies for him (hence “honey”, since he doesn’t even know her name). When he arrives at Pillsbury’s office, he discovers that she is the administrative assistant to the boss. Oops. Whether or not he will be able to keep his job now depends on his future behavior.
He assumes that she is a secretary, and that anyone can order her around. He then gets a message from the CEO office, sent by her. He realized that though she isn’t the CEO, she has the authority send messages from his office (not just repeating what a higher-up says), and therefore his job is endangered. She indicates that his job depends on his future behavior (giving him another chance).
So why did she make the copies? Presumably she needed a reason to send the message, and just making him come to simply say “I’m not a secretary!” would waste everyone’s time? Presumably he really did need the copies for a business reason and he just needs to be more sensitive to the value of other people’s time?
Brian R: Her point is already made when he gets to the CEO’s office and sees her. She doesn’t need to say “I’m not a secretary.” Making the copies just takes a few seconds, and is a reasonably good passive-aggressive jab.
The implication is that he might be fired for calling her “honey”? Maybe if SHE were the CEO…
And at least he said “thanks,” so it’s not as if he was being totally rude.
Not just calling her “honey,” but for assuming that any random woman is available to do secretarial work for him. That could at least result in a serious talk with HR.
Yeah, probably realistically not a firing, but it’s a cartoon, and he’s just expressing uneasiness, not actually getting fired. I would express uneasiness too, if I realized that the random person I hadn’t treated well was actually the administrative assistant to the CEO.
“He assumes that she is a secretary, and that anyone can order her around.”
Out of curiosity, has *anyone* in the last 30 years worked in an office where there were surplus secretaries about for anyone to order around? I’ve *never* worked in such an office.
Also, other than respectful titles is there a difference between secretary and administrative assistant?
“So why did she make the copies? ”
‘When they go low; we go high’. Nothing is more gut wrenchingly debilitating as realizing you made an inappropriate demand and yet your target gracefully did it without complaint. It makes you feel *much* more of heel then any angry reprimand would.
For me the difficult thing to get was the two different responses to “Do I still work here”. “Barely” is (an insulting quip) is one. And “It’ll be up to you” (an icy warning) is another. But together they do not mix. Pick one or the other (I recommend “It’ll be up to you”.)
@woozy: It works for me. “Barely” implies he’s on thin ice, while “It’s up to you” is both a warning not to screw up again and an indication that if he walks the straight and narrow from now on, he’ll keep his job.
“The implication is that he might be fired for calling her “honey”? Maybe if SHE were the CEO…”
Calling her honey *and* assigning secretarial work to a random woman he met in the hall.
She’s not CEO, but she apparently (to him) has a close working relationship with the CEO. Even if she can’t get him fired directly, she’s in a very good position to poison the boss’s view of him. Most employees are “at will” and can be fired for anything not otherwise illegal.
All of that is based on real-world office politics. Cartoon logic is much looser.
I work for a large multinational company. The last two assistants to our President went directly into VP-level jobs afterward. Executive assistant is just that. It involves no secretarial work at all.
I think she’s perfectly capable if just telling him she’s not a secretary.
“I think she’s perfectly capable if just telling him she’s not a secretary.”
Yes, but where’s the fun in that?
Also, he’ll remember this *much* better.
When I started at MegaCorp in the early 80s, the job position at the time was called “secretary”. It did involve a fair amount of typing in those days. At some point, the title was changed to “office administrator”, usually just “OA”.
Originally, almost no one made their own copies. That’s because most of the copying machines were staffed by operators. The machines also didn’t have auto-feed, so every sheet had to be copied separately.
Today, making a document that requires 100 copies would be done on a word processing program on a computer. All he had to do was send it to the network copier. Where I worked over the years, the secretary population went down dramatically as the processes were mechanized into computer networks and became simply a fill in program that linked to all parties involved and automatically electronically archived.
Brian in STL – around 1966 or so my dad moved to a new office. When one left the elevator one went to a window with a receptionist who then either called the attorney you were there to see – if the were part of the large firm on the floor or sent you to the office of the other lawyers, such as dad, on the floor.
In the receptionist/secretaries office there was this wondrous large device called a Xerox machine – the sort that one lifted the top of and placed the item on it to be copied (no I never copied my butt, but I did make a copy of my hand). My dad had a copy machine before this. It involved feeding the page to be copied and a blank piece of paper through a slot to have the picture taken of it (a light inside would flash). The two papers then came out of the machine. The copy then had to be fed into a different slot where it went through the chemical process and emerged from the machine – wet. My job was to hang up the wet copies for dad. It all smelled awful. I really liked this new device much better. Over the years other friends had to pay to make copies at the library or a store – I always was able to make copies on dad’s machine.
I still have the last, now antiquated, copy machine my dad owned in our home office. When I got the practice, I got the copier also. One of the scariest days of my life was when there was the first problem after we brought it home and I realized that I was now “the key operator” (which I had realized at some point before this meant the main person using the machine not the person with the key to open it and fix it) – a scary thing when I had no idea what to do to resolve its problem. We went to replace a few years ago, but found out that we were just buying another scanner/printer combo which we already had, so we just kept it for when we need large numbers of copies.
Because, according to the worst principal we ever had. Library staff just ‘sits and read the books’, I was given the job of making copies for the entire school staff – with a mimeograph machine. Thank dog someone invented the copy machine soon after. To me, it was interesting to see the technical advances thru the years, even tho our school never received a new machine, just the castoff from one of the other high schools, all of whom received new machines every few years.
Comics I Don't Understand 
This strip didn’t seem that difficult to interpret. In the first panel, he thinks he is asking some random (minor) secretary to make copies for him (hence “honey”, since he doesn’t even know her name). When he arrives at Pillsbury’s office, he discovers that she is the administrative assistant to the boss. Oops. Whether or not he will be able to keep his job now depends on his future behavior.
He assumes that she is a secretary, and that anyone can order her around. He then gets a message from the CEO office, sent by her. He realized that though she isn’t the CEO, she has the authority send messages from his office (not just repeating what a higher-up says), and therefore his job is endangered. She indicates that his job depends on his future behavior (giving him another chance).
So why did she make the copies? Presumably she needed a reason to send the message, and just making him come to simply say “I’m not a secretary!” would waste everyone’s time? Presumably he really did need the copies for a business reason and he just needs to be more sensitive to the value of other people’s time?
Brian R: Her point is already made when he gets to the CEO’s office and sees her. She doesn’t need to say “I’m not a secretary.” Making the copies just takes a few seconds, and is a reasonably good passive-aggressive jab.
The implication is that he might be fired for calling her “honey”? Maybe if SHE were the CEO…
And at least he said “thanks,” so it’s not as if he was being totally rude.
Not just calling her “honey,” but for assuming that any random woman is available to do secretarial work for him. That could at least result in a serious talk with HR.
Yeah, probably realistically not a firing, but it’s a cartoon, and he’s just expressing uneasiness, not actually getting fired. I would express uneasiness too, if I realized that the random person I hadn’t treated well was actually the administrative assistant to the CEO.
“He assumes that she is a secretary, and that anyone can order her around.”
Out of curiosity, has *anyone* in the last 30 years worked in an office where there were surplus secretaries about for anyone to order around? I’ve *never* worked in such an office.
Also, other than respectful titles is there a difference between secretary and administrative assistant?
“So why did she make the copies? ”
‘When they go low; we go high’. Nothing is more gut wrenchingly debilitating as realizing you made an inappropriate demand and yet your target gracefully did it without complaint. It makes you feel *much* more of heel then any angry reprimand would.
For me the difficult thing to get was the two different responses to “Do I still work here”. “Barely” is (an insulting quip) is one. And “It’ll be up to you” (an icy warning) is another. But together they do not mix. Pick one or the other (I recommend “It’ll be up to you”.)
@woozy: It works for me. “Barely” implies he’s on thin ice, while “It’s up to you” is both a warning not to screw up again and an indication that if he walks the straight and narrow from now on, he’ll keep his job.
“The implication is that he might be fired for calling her “honey”? Maybe if SHE were the CEO…”
Calling her honey *and* assigning secretarial work to a random woman he met in the hall.
She’s not CEO, but she apparently (to him) has a close working relationship with the CEO. Even if she can’t get him fired directly, she’s in a very good position to poison the boss’s view of him. Most employees are “at will” and can be fired for anything not otherwise illegal.
All of that is based on real-world office politics. Cartoon logic is much looser.
I work for a large multinational company. The last two assistants to our President went directly into VP-level jobs afterward. Executive assistant is just that. It involves no secretarial work at all.
I think she’s perfectly capable if just telling him she’s not a secretary.
“I think she’s perfectly capable if just telling him she’s not a secretary.”
Yes, but where’s the fun in that?
Also, he’ll remember this *much* better.
When I started at MegaCorp in the early 80s, the job position at the time was called “secretary”. It did involve a fair amount of typing in those days. At some point, the title was changed to “office administrator”, usually just “OA”.
Originally, almost no one made their own copies. That’s because most of the copying machines were staffed by operators. The machines also didn’t have auto-feed, so every sheet had to be copied separately.
Today, making a document that requires 100 copies would be done on a word processing program on a computer. All he had to do was send it to the network copier. Where I worked over the years, the secretary population went down dramatically as the processes were mechanized into computer networks and became simply a fill in program that linked to all parties involved and automatically electronically archived.
Brian in STL – around 1966 or so my dad moved to a new office. When one left the elevator one went to a window with a receptionist who then either called the attorney you were there to see – if the were part of the large firm on the floor or sent you to the office of the other lawyers, such as dad, on the floor.
In the receptionist/secretaries office there was this wondrous large device called a Xerox machine – the sort that one lifted the top of and placed the item on it to be copied (no I never copied my butt, but I did make a copy of my hand). My dad had a copy machine before this. It involved feeding the page to be copied and a blank piece of paper through a slot to have the picture taken of it (a light inside would flash). The two papers then came out of the machine. The copy then had to be fed into a different slot where it went through the chemical process and emerged from the machine – wet. My job was to hang up the wet copies for dad. It all smelled awful. I really liked this new device much better. Over the years other friends had to pay to make copies at the library or a store – I always was able to make copies on dad’s machine.
I still have the last, now antiquated, copy machine my dad owned in our home office. When I got the practice, I got the copier also. One of the scariest days of my life was when there was the first problem after we brought it home and I realized that I was now “the key operator” (which I had realized at some point before this meant the main person using the machine not the person with the key to open it and fix it) – a scary thing when I had no idea what to do to resolve its problem. We went to replace a few years ago, but found out that we were just buying another scanner/printer combo which we already had, so we just kept it for when we need large numbers of copies.
Because, according to the worst principal we ever had. Library staff just ‘sits and read the books’, I was given the job of making copies for the entire school staff – with a mimeograph machine. Thank dog someone invented the copy machine soon after. To me, it was interesting to see the technical advances thru the years, even tho our school never received a new machine, just the castoff from one of the other high schools, all of whom received new machines every few years.