Why is reception work so ill-paid and low status?

I agree completely. But good people in that role tend to move on to better-paying and better-respected positions.

I've worked such jobs, but I'm happier doing clerk type work now instead. It's less hectic and demanding. And it pays better.

Deb - you're right - you gets what you pays for! And sometimes you get lucky. Someone cares or has some sense or displays some competence.

I've been on the medical merry-go-round for some months recently, and I can tell you that there's an unending supply of idiots out there.

It's a crucial position that should be paid appropriately - but seldom is. Nursing likewise!

I on the other hand had the multiple experience of finding our "secretaries step I, or II", whatever the description was then, so bright and interested that we trained them to be lab techs. Not high end lab techs, but starters, and one did go on and get licensed in California. Each time we did this we had to go get another secretary, who then was smart and interested in what was going on, and... so on. Ths happened with three women under my purview. I admit maybe it was me that got them interested, but they had brains to start with.

OK, that was within a ten year period a few decades ago now. And one of the women who started out typing for us did have a BA in English. She was the one who got licensed as a lab tech, not easy. But we were blessed then, over the years I was there, with really sharp people hired as secretary I.

Aaaaah - medical receptionists!

Perfect example, often, I think, of powerless people getting power indirectly and misusing it!~!!!

How often are they cold and brusque and rude?

How wonderful is it when they are kind and warm and such? It makes such a huge difference when you are anxious and distressed!!!







High pay and respect for receptionists! May it become a job people aspire to!!!!

Yep - but WHY should they have to do that? One of my friends who started out as a medical receptionist now has her Phd and is a professor at a university here. What if we valued the job as the complex and crucial one it is?

I'm not arguing with you on this, Dlowan - couldn't agree more. Our situation that I just described was in an outpost with zero patients, being as it was a research lab complex. Takes real wits to man a desk with patients... and I am not kidding at all. No neophyte should be ensconsced there, a place where sometimes communication is vital.

(man a desk being generic. You often find women at desks.)

Just as with any position common sense can make a big difference. It shouldn't be hard to find an entry-level employee with common sense and the fact that being a receptionist doesn't require much else justifies, in my opinion, its status as an entry-level position.

The trick is that in some medical offices the job calls for more than common sense.

Or, if it is just common sense, there should be some giant book of what ifs to back it up.

I was a med receptionist at an internist's office after college classes as well as the reservations person (weekend bed assigner for admissions) at a now years later renown hospital. Sure, you ask the md when stuff is tough. But, you don't need someone witless in that place..

If you will reread the second sentence in the first post, dlowan, you will have the answer to the question posed in the title.

and if you read this bit you might see why Wabbit may have some issues...





I may immortalize these very words in my 'signature'................

Actually Deb, if it is any consolation - such great staff go on to marry people like me........ they might not shape up as spouses, but they do know their way around a switchboard............ either way they suffer.

Nah - it takes WAY more than common sense in my sort of area, Craven - eg it takes the ability to manage extremely mentally disordered people calmly and to be able to triage when something can wait and when it can't - being able to calm and soothe extremely distressed people - at the same time as taking constant phone calls, doing bookings, and suchlike, typing, file management, child-care (and not easy kids) - just for starters.


Actually, what I am saying, I guess, is that I want a career path for clerical people that takes account of the high skill level needed for some reception jobs. Mebbe businesses require more just the common sense thing?

It is kind of like in my own area - if you want money and formal status, go for management - there is almost no career path recognizing high level clinical skills. I have one of the few jobs in the goddamn state that is at a senior level for clinical reasons alone - and that is damn poorly paid compared with similar skill level jobs in other areas. But - I do not want to be a manager, so I am happy. AND I get high status in the informal pecking order in my team. Reception is a job abandoned for paperwork by people wanting better pay in the clerical area. I see no evidence that the skills of some of the great people are recognized in their hierarchy. (WE sure as hell recognize them!! - We meaning clinicians.) That - in the sort of jobs areas some of us work in, is insanity. As we see when we have low-skilled staff.


Anyhoo - just whingeing.

There is an assumption about all office work which goes back quite some time--and that assumption is that office workers are by and large, dependent women. Secretaries were originally men. The highest paid and most trusted secretaries remained men well into the 20th century. But the advent of the typewriter coupled with the cultural assumption that that type of work was best suited for women began to change things. (Similarly, when the upright piano came into existence, women found work outside the home playing the piano at movie theaters in the silent era--women were very prominent in rag-time piano.) Women began gradually to fill clerical jobs everywhere which were then considered "unskilled," because of their increasing dominance of typewriting. The spread of the use of the typewriter in the United States began in the 1870's, and was going full throttle by the mid-1880's. The women who were employed were often single women still living with their parents--hence, dependent women.

The male secretaries of the day were very well paid; the typing clerks were not, being, after all, dependent women. The situation is entirely diffferent, but the attitudes remain unchanged. When i supervised a great many student workers at Southern Illinois University, i considered it crucial to have well-spoken, verbally adroit people who projected self-confidence and competence in the operation of our switchboard. I carefully screened our student workers, and those who lacked the qualifications were not even trained to operate the switchboard--i employed them elsewhere. I gave them a raise at every opportunity; although i was only allowed to give them five cents an hour, and only once per "trimester," they responded very positively to that fifteen cents a year. I was repeatedly told by them that in other student work positions, they hadn't even been told that their pay could be raised. Our facility was eight miles from the southern edge of campus, and therefore, the student workers had a round trip drive of at a minimum, sixteen miles (which is twenty-five kilometers for those of you challenged by metric ignorance of any other measurement system). I scheduled them as much as possible for long blocks of time on as few days a week as possible, so that they drove as few miles as possible to get their mandated fifteen hours per week maximum. The Office of the Vice President for Academic Affairs, of which we were a subdivision, at first called to investigate why we were wasting money hiring full-time employees to answer the switchboard; when i told them they were student workders, i was all but accused of lying. Eventually, they accepted that i had "worked a miracle," and we were continually praised for the professional image we projected, both by university staff, and by the public with whom we dealt to a far greater extent than do most departments of a university.

An unconscious attitude prevails that telephone work, and rote clerical work are done by dependent women, and that it is not necessary to pay the positions well or to treat the employees with respect and decency. And as Our Cunning Coney has pointed out, one does indeed get what one pays for.

Setanta - monkeys and peanuts?

Rather . . .

Absolutely! Yet, that is where the neophytes - or the also rans - go - with smegging tragic results where I am at present.

Yeah. But we ALWAYS seem to have them over the last few years. It is a plague!!!!!

I have worked with absolutely wonderful people in the same position.

Where are they?

Amen, Set.

Type-writers, by the way, were initially considered beyond the ability of women to use.

It might upset their uteruses and cause them to fall barren. I understand that this is still a serious reason to keep the vote from women in general*.









*But not in Sth Australia - one of the first! No?