Imagine working at a company as an intern and being expected to do a lot of secretarial and office manager type duties. If you then transitioned to a new role at the company, would you stop doing the tasks you used to do, or would you keep doing them along with your new job?

In this story, one attorney is in this situation, and she has taken on office manager duties along with her attorney work. It takes a comment from the office secretary for her to realize she’s doing way too much.

Let’s see how the story plays out.

Boss agrees with secretary that I am not the office manager so I stop managing the office

When I was doing my articles at a small law firm (internship to be admitted as an attorney) I was the go-to person for everything at the office (setting up computers, buying stationery, paying bills, going to court, seeing clients,etc).

After being admitted as an attorney I continued doing all this because the secretary only did about 20% of what a secretary would usually do and refused to do anything else.

My boss does some shady business (don’t pay taxes, etc) so he couldn’t just fire her for fear of her ratting him out. He also never disciplined her. We are not in the US.

This sounds like a horrible work environment.

Since we worked from my boss’s mother’s house, the secretary also spent about 50% of her day just chatting to his mother and they became fast friends.

Guess who was always the evil one that everyone ganged up on? Yours truly.

I was made out to be incompetent at my job and I used to cry a lot and almost became an alcoholic from work stress.

She was reprimanded by the secretary.

One day the secretary got really upset with me (after I asked her to buy stationery since we didn’t even have staples) and after a heated argument told me that I’m not the office manager and should stop lording it about as if I was (bear in mind I was her senior both as an attorney and in number of years worked at the firm).

My boss did nothing and rather got upset with me and so did his mother.

I decided there and then I am done doing both secretary work and my attorney work because I was working roughly 50-60 hours per week (standard is 40) trying to get everything done without receiving overpay (the unemployment rate in my country is around 30% and in the legal field supply of lawyers exceeds demand).

She knew this and my boss knew this but no one cared that I was basically working myself into an early grave.

I’m not sure how malicious this was. OP shouldn’t have been doing a job that wasn’t really her job anyway.

Cue malicious compliance.

If everyone agrees that I am not the office manager than I will stop managing the flow of the office and only do my attorney work.

I stopped paying the bills, buying the stationery, reminding my boss of important meetings, etc.

There was one problem after another.

Within two weeks the electricity was cut off for 10 days because it wasn’t paid and my boss’ elderly mother and the rest of his family had no electricity.

We could also not work for those 10 days.

Once the electricity went on, the phone lines were cut because of non-payment. We could again not work.

The post piled up, there were no stationery. We couldn’t do service of court documents because our service providers cut us off.

It went on for weeks.

There was no going back.

I simply worked around the issues and sorted my life out (one example: when the wifi was off I used my cellphone to hotspot my laptop without telling anyone).

In the end my boss and his mother begged me to do what I used to do but I refused.

Since I was focusing more on my actual work my fees increased and my pay increased as well.

Shortly thereafter I moved away from that office to our secondary office and worked alongside lovely colleagues who all did what they got paid to do. I have been at this new office (same firm just a different location) for the last two years.

I’m glad the secretary said something. Now, maybe she’ll actually have to do something instead of just chatting with the boss’s mom all day.

Let’s see how Reddit reacted to this story.

This is a good lesson.

Americans do tend to work long hours.

This person can relate to this story.

It does seem odd!

These are good questions.

Going above and beyond isn’t always helpful.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.