What do you actually do?

I have no idea but I'll be watching this thread with interest as I've wondered this for a while!

Really? ?

What you do in an office depends on what your job is. I do feck all filing. Sorry mate, it's an odd question.

not at all, I work in an office, but it's a public sector office and since the emphasis is on local and national government policy I imagine it's very different from a private sector office

good to see you by the way, it's been a while

I have an office job too and I do bugger all filing - my assistant does it

I can't be that generalistic about what I do...I work in an office, but what I do is specialist, so I cant really be of any help at all!!

You mad woman! It's not the office that defines the job, it's the job that defines the office. I use my office for meetings. And for marking work, planning lessons, making phonecalls. When I had a 'proper' office job I did telesales. My sister works in an office too, in sales. Somebody has to be doing something other than filing, or no filing would be generated ?

I work in an office and work mainly on spreadsheet analysis, answering emails, making tea (for me) and the occassional bit of filing, photocopying and cheque writing.

yes, it is a bit of an odd one and I appreciate it depends on the job

it's hard to explain, but every job I've had has been public sector, and has mainly involved interpreting government policy and delivering services that are related to implementing statutory duties relating to government policy

I just find it hard to imagine what an average 'normal' office job is outside the the public sector

Before my current job in family management, I worked in an office for many years. I never filed a thing. If I had been a filer , the company would probably be out of business now ?. It depends on your job in the office!

ah.. msn

unfortunately my msn days are somewhat over, can't use it at work at all, and can't really get on at home anymore - it's very hit and miss

But it's the job. If you're an accountant in the private sector, you're doing pretty much what an accountant in the public sector does. I can't imagine that every job in the public sector (by a long stretch) is involved in interpreting policies?

I've worked in both public and private sector and haven't found that much difference between the two to be honest. When I left the public sector to come to the private sector I expected things to be far more fast paced and less bureaucratic - I've not found that to be the case, perhaps because of the size of the organisation I know work for.

I work in an office. I may calls to existing customers to get them booked in with an advisor for a review of their current contracts.

I speak on the phone. Put details in to a diary. Put details on to a database and then on to a spreadsheet for each call I successfully complete.

I also make coffee.

My husband works in an office too. (same office as it happens). He types, all day long. In a bizarre code that only IT geeks understand. He does some clever stuff for us lot on the phones so everyone can keep track of what we've sold, what we're doing and who we're doing it with. He doesn't make coffee.

now this is the sort of thing I was (badly) trying to ask about ?

Well I work in an office, it is Public Sector (Central Govt) however I have 3 support staff that do any filing I may have. My Job Title is Review Officer - I sit in front of a computer with a huge monitor and draw maps all day long. I write a few reports, travel around Wales on site visits, and move County/Community/Electoral boundaries around. Not a run of the mill office job! lol

Well my job title is Administrator, which is sort of like secretary+. I have a team of two people who I manage,so I have to do yearly reviews for them (I'm the person who decides if they get a raise which still scares the cr@p out of me!).

I work in a uni, so I deal with academics and their admin queries - i.e. what should I do if a student does x, y or z (never mind that they've been there longer than me, I'm the 'expert' on the rules and regs). I speak to the schools we work with and any concerns they have. I'm the first point of contact for students with any worries they have. I also deal with our external examiners, so I'm the main contact for an awful lot of people and they all expect me to know who they are and where they're from (except the students, who are scared if I know them!). Other than that it's a lot of officey stuff - database work, organising mailings, processing claim forms and invoices and just everything that's needed to keep the course running. Where it differs from secretarial work (which is what my team do) is the level of human contact (which is my favourite bit), and that I'm autonomous in that I decide what needs doing next and have a lot of input into how I work.

It probably all still sounds quite dull to someone that doesn't work in an office, but I've been doing it three years and I'm not bored yet. So far this week I have helped a tutor organise a case conference with a failing student, another tutor asked me to sit in on a meeting with a student who is thinking about leaving as an expert on fees and regs - I then had to type up a meeting report and a letter to the student outlining our discussion. I've had a meeting to help design the front cover of our new handbook. I've been in a very dull meeting this afternoon which I had to minute. I spent some time talking to potential applicants at an open day.

It's actually really hard to explain but basically every day is different and I think a lot of office work is like that these days - so many people in upper management are computer literate enough to type their own letters and do their own photocopying etc that secretarial and admin roles are really varied and you can be asked to do almost anything.

I see what you mean, there are accountants sat opposite me who are working exclusively on NEF payments and surestart funding, which does involve some policy stuff though

but I suppose accountancy is all down to numbers in the end

I know I'm being a bit dim on this, but I can be a bit dim sometimes and I reckon I can cope with being dim here

Actually having read your question properly, I'm actually in the public sector too (at least I think unis are public sector) so my answer is probably of feck all help. And also quite longwinded. Sorry about that ?.

I work in an office. I take instructions for surveys either by telephone or computerised system. Put details on a database, arrange appointments for surveys. My job is mainly typing surveys. Things have been a bit hectic since the Single survey started in Scotland. A bit of filing, not loads though, invoicing, banking etc.

nothing too exciting.

that's it! that's exactly it

I've been half heartedly looking at jobs for the last few weeks, as my contract is coming to an end soon
I see all these job titles, and I have a decent idea what al the public sector ones are, but when I look at the private sector jobs I generally have absolutely no idea what they actually are

I work in an office for the training dept of a company but we provide training for our own staff and external staff. A lot of the training has mandatory annual updates - we run 3-4 courses a week on average.

I organise the courses (dates, trainers - internal or extermal, location, equipment, refreshments), take bookings, send out joining instructions, prepare registers for each course, do the certificates of attendance, send out non-attendance info to managers if staff don't attend, collate post-course evaluation forms for analysis, send out forms for internal staff 3 months after training for them to sit down with their manager to discuss how the training has changed their work performance and practice - and then analyse the results, do half yearly reports for management, invoice for all external course bookings and credit chasing, track income v targets and prepare reports for management on a quarterly basis, take enquiries from internal and external staff about their training, keep internal staff training records up to date on a database, organise external training for staff if it isn't a course we can offer in-house, provide training history reports for internal staff as requested.

Most of the above is done on crappy IT systems to so it's not linked together/automated.

We're also an NVQ assessment centre and I do all the admin for that - registering candidates, claiming units/certificates, providing candidate info for the NVQ assessors, collating info required for external quality visits - plus half yearly reports for management.

(I've never written it all down before. I might copy and save the above for when i need to update my CV)

I work 1 day a week in the office,instead of the shop.I order stock,do paperwork,,for enviromental health,cleaning.We have to keep all paper work for ages incase someone gets food poisoning so we can track every item incase of a outbreak. I look at how much money we have made and how we can make more.(boring).Make myself lots of drinks and file for a while too.

Then the other 4 days i serve customers coffee and get abused,spoken to badly.

When i worked at IR i did quite a lot of filing,i could spend a day in a dusty room full of files.

I work in the private sector on a public sector site (hospital). I have endless meetings in my office, analyse budgets and performance figures on spreadsheets, spend a lot of time answering emails and talking to customers on the phone, plus talking to my staff about work issues. I do have a shared assistant but I rarely ask her to do my filing/photocopying so I usually do all that too- my assistant raises purchase orders for me to approve and inputs data for reports. Fortunately I do have the opportunity to escape and walk around the site, otherwise I'd go mad.

This is all really interesting, thanks for the replies

I'm an account handler in a marketing agency - I review emails from clients telling me what they want / what we've done wrong kind of thing, and I respond to them and make them feel like they're the most important person in my life ?. I then flirt with designers and programmers to get them to do what the client wants ? and then I send the invoice out to make the company lots of money.

I don't do any filing, everything's digital innit. I don't make tea either as I don't drink it. We eat lots of biscuits and discuss whether it's ok to open the blinds or not depending on where the bedazzling sun is. I bib myself in and out of electronically-locked doors to move around the office as security is just silly! (especially considering I work in Newbury?). And I get in trouble for not following the correct company 'project lifecycle' processes - zzz.

Hope that helps....!

I might too ? That describes my old job pretty much, when I was a trainer. What's your official title?

I work in an office. I'm a legal secretary to a advocate who is also a partner in the firm i work for. I bascially run her office, answer all the phone calls, deal with clients queries, put some calls through to her, take messages, get hold of clients for her to speak to, speak to other firms about various cases/clients including coordinating contact arrangements for some clients' children (including on occasion telling a mum or dad that they will not be seeing their child over Christmas). I do all her audio typing, draft agreements, wills, divorce petitions, affidavits of means. I complete company books, draft replies to standard borrowing enquiry letters. I attend to clients in reception, listen to their ranting and raving, put up with their various unwashed smells, the more addicted clients who turn up off their heads on whateer drug they can get hold of that day and profer tissues to those who get so upset over their spouses misdeamours that they burst into floods of tears on me. I do all the filing, run her diary, liaise with other offices and governement departments over Court appearances/visits to the prison to take instructions from clients. Also I do virtually all the admin for a Family Law Association that my boss is secretary of (which in turn makes me the secretary of) including sending out application packs, organising and booking venues for traning seminars they host as well as arranging food for the delegates. I order all the stationary for the firm and keep tabs on stock levels. I always make tea/coffee for me and my boss, in the 9 years i've worked there i dont' think she's ever made me a cup!

Basically i organise her life at work so she can concentrate on the difficult bit - the legal stuff!! ?

I work(ed) in the HR Dept at a Head Office of a manufacturing company. I'm currently on Mat Leave, and was wondering today whether I'd remember what to do when I return in May ?

This could be a useful exercise for me!

I answer my phone ALOT. I'm responsible for providing advice to half of our factory locations, so probably about 4,500 employees. I give advice about recruitment, termination, disciplinary, grievances, long term absences.

I also provide training, conduct interviews (my favourite part!) sadly make people redundant (not my favourite part)

I produce contracts for new starters, write letters in response to grievances / disciplinaries, devise training sessions, respond to reference requests.

I ask my assistant to file. She loves it as it means she doesn't have to answer the phone. She's a bit phone-phobic.

Now that depends....Officially, HR Administrator as we're linked to the HR Department and our HR database won't allow lots of different job titles. At work the training dept is known as 'something fancy' so I was the 'something fancy administrator' but this changed this year to reflect a change of focus to the 'let's improve our internal staff practices before we worry about training external candidates' department...so I am now the 'let's.......candidates' administrator.

When asked, I say I'm a training administrator. I like to do what it says on the tin.

I don't do anything mwhahahahaha.

But when I did I worked in an office. I hitched, read the BBC news, shopped on Amazon, made tea, stared out of the window, had lunch, had discussions about what cheesy and kitsch meant, and how the french version of kitsch was different to how we would use it in the uk...

But when I was actually working I would talk to the other people on the project about what exciting things they had done, write articles about it, write press releases, produce stuff for the website, organise stands at conferences and events to tell people about it, design and write flyers and posters to hand out or display at these events, write ridiculously long-winded reports in EU-ese explaining just how many articles, press releases, events, flyers and posters we had done, how much effect they had had, the lessons we had learnt from doing them, what we would do differently next time, manage the budget for said activities, write project proposals to get more money to do more of the same...

Ah hah! Flump, thank you, you've probably given me more insight into what i might be doing in my new job then my job description has!

ATM I am a team leader in a public sector consumer organisation. I currently do sweet FA as I'm being made redundant at the end of March. I used to manage a small team of consumer advisors, which was mainly managing resources, appraisals, dealing with complaints about our service and VIP enquiries.

In 20 days time I will be an account manager for an e-marketing company. I think I'll mostly be doing work process stuff to start off with, probably designing one of those project lifecycle things! ? It's quite a career change for me, am excited but shitting bricks too.

? I do this too, and knew what you mean 'roo.

"I'm a senior tax advisor" "Yes but what do you do all day?" "I multi-manage $6 billion investments" "Right, but literally, what do you do at 9am? 10am? etc. etc." I'm probably such a pain but I'm interested.

Back in the day i worked in some else's office i was a - mmmm - dont think i ever had a title - pr consultant, exec, handler or some other nonsense

i used to get emails from clients who needed some love and reassurance because their bosses were being horrible to them - would supply necessary love and reassurance

would then ring round all journo contacts furiously and butter up trying to remember all their family conflicts, children's birthdays etc plus promise any free stuff that might be appropriate

shout at all suppliers and then behave like a tart to any new suppliers or cross promotion candidates to try and get what is needed

write some press releases, research stuff for new pitches and briefs, source stuff for sales promotions, read press clippings, hunt about for new clients

quite a lot of event planning -

mostly i watched my back and chased other people's tails

huge amounts of gossip, coffee and cakes - nice long lunches