What's your unofficial role in work?

[MamaAndTheSofa]

Chatting to a couple of friends the other day, we were discussing how we all have unofficial roles in work - roles that are never in any job description, but which someone has to do.

Mine is "Attender of funerals". When we feel we ought to send someone from the office to a funeral (eg a colleagues mum has died or something), it always ends up being me.

Another friend is the unofficial knot un-tier; if anyone has a knot they can't undo (which seems to happen ridiculously often in his work, as far as I can tell), they come to him and he undoes it.

Another friend is the one who always has hand cream.

What are yours?

Also the one who tends to take on the students on placement

The blocker - after 30 years experience, I'm the one who jumps in and tells the keen but inexperienced folk that their amazing new idea would be in breach of whatever legislation they haven't bothered to research.

Spelling Queen - I have a knack for spotting other people's typos but oddly never my own 😂

Supplier of the Post-its. These are highly prized amongst my reception team, especially the lovely brightly coloured ones.
Also occasional Freddo supplier when moral is low

And what about Small James?!

Supplier of stationery

This thread is hilarious and makes me realise that my workplace provides so much!
-canteen with baristas
-all bathrooms are fully stocked with free sanitary wear and deodorant
-IT on call for all computer related issues
-facilities department to control heating
-All documents that are written are checked and approved by QA.
-Dedicated trainers in each department
-Christmas trees and put up and decorated by external providers
-on site nurse for medical needs
There’s way more…🤣

Completer of forms. Reminder of to do tasks. I'm chief disputer to really shit utilities companies, the hours I've wasted on hold/ on the phone and emails, I'm almost on first name terms with ofgem at this point.

Manage the unofficial company diary. I'm the only one who anticipates upcoming important dates and have diarised it all. Before I joined, the company was reactive to things and paid fines because the completed stuff late.

I'm basically the administrator for the business despite that not being my role, simply because I'm organised and detail orientated.

I circulate the death notices when a colleague's parent or sibling dies and I post them on the intranet at work.

Do you check with the colleague first?

Keeper of the Lego (I work in a secondary school). It's the easiest lunchtime club ever. Everyone loves a bit of Lego!

No, but I live in Ireland and there's a different culture around death here. All deaths in Ireland are announced via a notice on a website called rip.ie. I just copy the dearh notice from rip.ie Funerals are open to all to attend. At work we would discuss who will attend the funeral, so as to ensure that at least one staff member will attend the funeral mass, to represent the office. Those who don't/can''t attend will usually buy a mass card and leave it on their desk. But they need to know the name of the deceased person, in order to buy the card. That's why I share the death notice.

Tbf your workplace sounds great! I think a lot of PPs on here work in smaller offices where this kind of thing is not feasible?

We have free coffee, tea, milk, sugar, even ground coffee in our kitchens and free fruit as well which is lovely. IT are on call but sometimes you just need someone to remind you how to paste into your Word doc without formatting.

We have a quality control team as well but it certainly doesn't check all outgoing emails!

You know that person whose problem it is when it doesn’t seem to be anyone else’s problem. Yeah that’s me.

Milk bringer-inner
Fruit box collector (we work on 3rd floor but have to collect from reception, I do it to get my steps!)
Social event manager
Office treat buyer

My other role is supplier of biscuits.

Joiner of dots.

It's a 5000 person company and I work across multiple functions, so I'm the person who realises that team A have the same needs as team Z and it'd be most efficient to tackle them together.

As a fellow Irish person i didn’t even question your post 🤣🤣

Excel formatter - I sneak in and fix the font/column/row sizes and update formulas and macros

I am the one who remembers people’s birthdays.

I do this too but as I'm self-employed it's generally restricted to completing forms but sending them back with everything nicely formatted. I'm prone to replacing gender with sex too.

WTF? Since when is this a thing?!

Tea bitch
Sanpro provider and topper upper
Stapler filler

Peace broker and finder out of information

also supplier of chocolate

I've just left this job now but for the last few Christmases I've made a sit down 3 course Christmas Dinner for around 15 to 20 people in our crap office kitchen.

Timekeeper in a way. I host one of the daily calls which always starts on time, and I seem to have trained others to do the same.