AIBU about job?

[Dhapeer]

I started a new job 6 months ago. I was interviewed by the office manager, my manager and a director. It was casually alluded to that everyone pitches in with taking calls etc.
On my first day, it became apparent that while doing your job, they also have this 'virtual' reception which is where your phone rings every time a reception phone in any of the offices nationally rings. You are expected to take some of these calls.
I can not describe the stress of being in the middle of something and having to answer reception calls.
Ok, so I got used to that and accepted it.
Last week, we had an admin meeting and we were told that we now have to do the following as well:

1. Offer to do incoming/outcoming post when receptionist is on leave
2. Listen out for the doorbell ringing and answer the door if no-one is at the 4 desks behind reception. I sit about 30 seconds walk from the reception door.
3. Make teas and coffees for meetings in the absence of the receptionist.

I have 22 years administrative experience and am supposed to be a Team Administrator for a team of 5 building surveyors. I also have PA duties for my Director.

Would any of you do this? I have handed in my notice to my manager by text and have rang HR and am waiting to hear back.

FFS, they are paying me 28k to answer phones and make tea?

Am I the unreasonable one given that NONE of this was indicated in the interview and is not on my job description?

FWIW, my salary is well over double what yours is, and I'll still make cups of tea if required - for visitors, for my boss, or even - shock, horror - for one of my administrators. My boss will also make drinks when required
If required is the relevant phrase here ......... IF REQUIRED.
This suggests the phone is not ringing every few mins as in the OPs case.
And companies paying staff 70,000+ to make tea must be coining it in somewhere to be able to be so profligate.

But I have haphazardly, gently alluded to this for months and he just didn't pick up on it.

Tip for your next job OP, managers don't want complaints they want solutions. What they have in place sounds chaotic and not very customer service focussed. I would have gone to them with a plan to stop this virtual nonsense and have enough reception cover and an on hold telephone system. Might not have been taken up but then at least you would have tried.

Yes this happened to my old department around 6 years ago. We suddenly became the receptionist and it took me away from doing the job I was paid a lot of money for. It was truly senseless. They thought they were saving money by not replacing the receptionist but in fact I significantly worked less because of the contstant interruptions. People saying that its just a few phone calls and doorbell going, just answer it. Well no, It was around a hundred a day, it is loud because everyone has to hear it. I left.

I think if the OP came on here and said something along the lines of "my work has a ridiculous system which means that the phone rings several times an hour and I have to constantly have one eye on the phone in case the receptionist happens to be away from her desk as well as do my job. On top of this we are expected to know where the receptionist is at all times and greet people, help with meetings if she is away from her desk, in addition to everything I have to do in my role and it's all getting too much!" People would have been much more supportive.

Instead we got, I have to keep answering the phone, I earn £28k a year and have 2 years experience, I am not a receptionist FFS those days are behind me, it's beneath me! Attitude is key. And this has nothing to do with woman being expected to do more menial work (which I agree is a huge problem across industries). If a man had this attitude in my workplace he'd be a shot down in flames. Which is what happened recently.

Oh sorry 22 years experience! Such an Important detail to get wrong there!

Surely after 22 years you should understand the word Delegation, you could delegate, make a rota, muck in with the teas op.

I think people are jumping on the posting style, and the details have been misread.

Would everyone else really be happy if, on top of their full time job, they were expected to have the reception phone copy over to their desk, ring three times a minute, monitor whether it is needed to be covered, field the call out to another office, then get back to their job, which they may have had to exit from that part of theirs computer, start again, for another 20 seconds before the phone rings again?

Its not bloody possible.

If they just want to turn the phones on for the receptionists hour lunch, or set up a rota for holidays, that's another matter altogether.

And, @dhapeer I'm glad you know your worth. A good administrator is under valued and bloody important. They often are the person who knows how everything works, is realistic about job timescales and likelihood of achieving an objective, and has to know a fair amount about the job of the person they're supporting.

you wont be replaced by a chimp, you will be replaced by a sensible delegator, i hope

Thank you to all the posters who get it. Why is it so wrong to say something is beneath me? Demeaning is a similar word. If I wanted a junior role, I would have applied for one. If I wanted to serve people tea, I'd have applied for a job in a cafe.
It is not what the job was advertised as being.
The poster who said that the more senior members of staff are costing more to answer phones etc. is correct. We have four administrators in our team all on similar salaries and two of us could do it easily if we weren't answering the damned phones all day.
You have no idea how distracting and jarring and disruptive the phone thing is. It is a company of over 400 employees and all calls come through reception as the geniuses took the executive decision not to have direct lines on business cards. Their skewed logic is that they want calls screened by us lot before the revered MEN take a call. Logically, if you have given someone your business card it is usually because you actually want them to be in touch or because they're a client, but Lord no. That would actually make sense.
Anyway it's done now so better start looking for this elusive job 3 times my salary lol.

Why is it so wrong to say something is beneath me?

Well because language matters for starters.

I’m surprised at the amount of calls. I thought most communication was done by email these days as it creates a trail and evidence as to what is agreed by when etc and also (especially for surveying projects) all those involved get the same message. I’m baffled at the phone calls.

As for tea for meetings. Surely it’s only a couple of times a week at most if all are covering.

But as you said OP. You’re not happy and I expect your attitude could have been deflating the atmosphere in the work place. Plus you said there was nothing they could have changed. So your manager wasn’t that senior to have any influence I’d say.

I've just done a search on reed.co.uk for my role and the first 6 salaries offered are as follows:
18k
25653
19905
22k
25-27k
20-23k

So people talking about an administrator being on £84k are clearly talking through their posteriors. For that salary, I'd serve tea naked with bells hanging from my tits.

I don't want to make tea and serve it to anyone twice a week or twice a year for that matter. It's not what I signed up to do.

People asking why OP is ONLY on 28k with so many years experience?.... cheeky sods....I've many more years experience and have never earned that much because although I was bloody good at my job, I wasn't prepared to make it my whole life and do all the doffing my cap or suck up to senior staff and work extra hours just for a pat on the head or the chance of promotion.
There's many reasons that a woman with that many years experience would be on 28k or less and does not mean she is crap.

I don't want to make tea and serve it to anyone twice a week or twice a year for that matter. It's not what I signed up to do.

As I've said best give future employers a list of what you will and won't do then.

For that salary, I'd serve tea naked with bells hanging from my tits

In the company the structure is as follows
Administrators
Surveyors
Managers
Directors
CEO

I support a team of 4 surveyors, PA to my manager and PA to one Director.

I'm with you, OP. MN likes to pretend people are snobs for wanting to do jobs that, broadly speaking, aren't menial, but you're not. You didn't sign up to this.

The Director is senior enough to effect change if he wanted to, but he doesn't tend to be the one who gets involved in the admin side of things.

Their skewed logic is that they want calls screened by us lot before the revered MEN take a call. Logically, if you have given someone your business card it is usually because you actually want them to be in touch or because they're a client, but Lord no. That would actually make sense

I’m a solicitor rather than a surveyor (is that the business you work in? I’ve lost track a bit with all the bells on tits )and this has been the case everywhere I’ve worked. I find even if people do give out direct dials, people end up ignoring it so their secretary can screen anyway. There are some situations where you really can’t take a client’s call- don’t have the info they need on hand, client will be loud and upset and you need to be somewhere private etc etc. I am definitely a woman as are most of our solicitors and we still get our calls screened. But most clients ring on my mobile anyway so I can do my own screening...

I would feel the same op. I will make tea for meetings, cover phones etc but if I suddenly found that it had become a requirement and was taking up a significant amount of my time I would be pissed off.

We get calls for other divisions, so for e.g. Building Services, Engineering, Structures, Acoustics. You don't have a damn clue who they are and the caller will inevitably ask to 'speak to someone else working on X Y Z project. You don't know who works on the team, what office they're in, let alone who is working on a specific project, so it's pure lunacy at times. You could be 5 minutes trawling through org charts to try to locate someone in a different regional office. None of it makes any sense and with my TWENTY TWO years experience, having worked in several large companies, I have NEVER in my life come across such a fucked up system. I believe it stems from when they were a small outfit, with no receptionists, everyone answered the phones, but now that it's grown, they haven't changed the bloody system.

And I can't screen calls for Paddy My Arse in Brighton because I don't know who he does/doesn't want to speak to. Nobody answers their fucking phones anyway!

OP from a fellow administrator. Clearly the tea/coffee making and door answering is a dealbreaker for you. Fair enough. We all have different dealbreakers in work/relationships/friendships. Best of luck finding a new role, which hopefully will have a better system for phone calls.

Thank you for the flowers!