Mr Admin Man: Reflections of an Odd-Job Office Boy

We all have our callings in life. Some of us have several over the course of our worldly span. Some of us are artists, some of us are scientists, some of us are engineers, some of us are those people who paint lines on the roads. So many important jobs stand before us as potential career prospects.

For me, my professional career so far has mostly been as an office administrator. I've dabbled in a few other things, like academia and library work, but the 9-5 grind of open-plan workplaces has been my home for many years.

When I finished my undergrad degree in 2016, I was a woefully inexperienced 21-year-old twerp with very few meaningful career prospects. At this stage, I knew the administrative path was one I wanted to take. To get the experience I severely lacked, I pitched myself as an administrative volunteer for a number of charitable organisations.

One of the most notable was as a reception volunteer with Citizens Advice Chelmsford . This role got me used to some of the basic admin tasks of dealing with clients, answering the phone, and inputting notes on databases. We all know that you have to start somewhere to get where you want, and this was as good a start as any for me.

Things picked up when I found paid work as a temp with the employment agency Adecco . They got me a six-month job working as a "works coordinator" for the wheelchair repair company, DGT Services Ltd. This role largely involved answering the phone to people who had a wheelchair which needed repairing, and booking them an appointment for an engineer to do the job for them. This role got me used to the busy hustle of office life, and perhaps more importantly, paid me a decent weekly wage while doing it.

My biggest and most important administrative project of six and a half years has been served at Open Road Visions , with whom I began as a data input volunteer in 2017, before becoming an apprentice admin assistant in 2018. This apprenticeship was arguably one of the most pivotal moments in my life as an administrator, granting me as it did 18 months to work towards a qualification and gain administrative experience in the process.

I achieved my City and Guild Level 3 Diploma in Business Administration through South Essex College of Further and Higher Education in 2020, graded as a distinction. By this point, I had acquired a variety of administrative responsibilities in our team office in Chelmsford. These included inputting, updating and discharging client data on the company database, dealing with clients on the reception desk and the phone, archiving paper materials, raising stationery orders and purchase orders for stock levels, and undertaking fire warden duties on the premises.

I was offered the proper job of data administrator with Open Road in 2019, which I gladly took. Undertaking these tasks, on a full wage as part of a team of outstanding colleagues, over the course of a number of years, has grown me and matured me into the professional administrator I always wanted to be. It all began when I started my career as a volunteer, which laid the baseline of experience for future development.

On the subject of future development, I have further administrative adventures lined up ahead of me. My role with Open Road will soon be ending after our long and productive collaboration, after which I shall commence a new role as a business support assistant secretary with Essex Police . I don't know what lies in store for me, and I'm of course scared of the unknown. I do, however, hope that my experiences so far hold me in good stead for whatever's coming.

I'm supremely grateful for the opportunities I've been given so far to flex my administrative muscles. Open Road deserves my particular thanks, for the many years of being taken on, for the professional qualification, and for the awards they've seen fit to bestow upon me (three Gem Awards, two Premier Awards, and a Long Service Award). Most of all, I'd like to thank my colleagues, who have shown me kindness and teamwork in the time I've known them. It's because of them that I've been able to become the fully-fledge administrator I am today.

As a career project, as a source of monetary income, as a contribution to society, the life of office administration is one I can thoroughly recommend. We administrators get things done, and we serve a worthy purpose in society. The businesses which keep society afloat, are themselves kept afloat by workers like us.

Our careers might be seen as dull and boring. That might be a fair assessment, although it does nothing to diminish or devalue our worth in society. Of all the people keeping the working world turning round, us administrators are proudly playing our part.