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Doing personal tasks for boss and paying with own money

I work for a very large, corporate firm as PA. I'm sometimes asked to cover for an exec assistant for a head of department.

I'm asked to do personal tasks for him which take up half my time as well as doing my everyday work for the two managers I am already assistant too.

He spends £30 on food and coffee a day. I have to go out and track special food down for him. He never carries cash and expects me to invoice him to claim the money back from him! He earns like £500k. I earn way less than 10% of that.

He wants me to buy a present of £1k for his wife on my own credit card. No. He wants me to wrap presents and research private schools for his kids, restaurants and holidays for his family.

I am paid and employed by the company for work tasks such as diary management, organising meetings, arranging work business trips and you know, work admin tasks. I am not paid by him personally to be his hired help. My last employers have been VERY insistent that admin/secretarial staff are not there for private tasks but solely for business tasks.

His EA works ALL the time. I work office hours and turn my blackberry off when I leave work.

Would you suck it up as it's 4 weeks cover over a year? Or say something?
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Comments

  • HappyMJ
    HappyMJ Posts: 21,115 Forumite
    10,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    Polarbeary wrote: »
    I work for a very large, corporate firm as PA. I'm sometimes asked to cover for an exec assistant for a head of department.

    I'm asked to do personal tasks for him which take up half my time as well as doing my everyday work for the two managers I am already assistant too.

    He spends £30 on food and coffee a day. I have to go out and track special food down for him. He never carries cash and expects me to invoice him to claim the money back from him! He earns like £500k. I earn way less than 10% of that.

    He wants me to buy a present of £1k for his wife on my own credit card. No. He wants me to wrap presents and research private schools for his kids, restaurants and holidays for his family.

    I am paid and employed by the company for work tasks such as diary management, organising meetings, arranging work business trips and you know, work admin tasks. I am not paid by him personally to be his hired help. My last employers have been VERY insistent that admin/secretarial staff are not there for private tasks but solely for business tasks.

    His EA works ALL the time. I work office hours and turn my blackberry off when I leave work.

    Would you suck it up as it's 4 weeks cover over a year? Or say something?
    I'd say I can't do that. I'd tell him to go and buy his own wife a present. Amazon is very easy to use. Try that instead.
    :footie:
    :p Regular savers earn 6% interest (HSBC, First Direct, M&S) :p Loans cost 2.9% per year (Nationwide) = FREE money. :p
  • Alter_ego
    Alter_ego Posts: 3,842 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper
    Do you like your job?
    I am not a cat (But my friend is)
  • jraf
    jraf Posts: 74 Forumite
    Eighth Anniversary 10 Posts Combo Breaker
    You clearly aren't happy with the situation and as you say, he is expecting you to go above and beyond. Whether the company is happy with him giving you tasks like this or not, get them to agree on it and get it in writing so everyone knows where they stand.

    One point interested me - you say he asks you to put things on your credit card and then invoice him for them later. If it were me I would use this to my advantage. There are plenty of incentives for spending on credit cards out there - just look at the guides on this website. You could be getting 0.5% cashback on all those purchases with Nationwide, or taking advantage of member's reward points etc with AMEX for example.

    Just a thought.
  • Guest101
    Guest101 Posts: 15,764 Forumite
    Polarbeary wrote: »
    I work for a very large, corporate firm as PA. I'm sometimes asked to cover for an exec assistant for a head of department.

    I'm asked to do personal tasks for him which take up half my time as well as doing my everyday work for the two managers I am already assistant too.

    He spends £30 on food and coffee a day. I have to go out and track special food down for him. He never carries cash and expects me to invoice him to claim the money back from him! He earns like £500k. I earn way less than 10% of that.

    He wants me to buy a present of £1k for his wife on my own credit card. No. He wants me to wrap presents and research private schools for his kids, restaurants and holidays for his family.

    I am paid and employed by the company for work tasks such as diary management, organising meetings, arranging work business trips and you know, work admin tasks. I am not paid by him personally to be his hired help. My last employers have been VERY insistent that admin/secretarial staff are not there for private tasks but solely for business tasks.

    His EA works ALL the time. I work office hours and turn my blackberry off when I leave work.

    Would you suck it up as it's 4 weeks cover over a year? Or say something?


    I think much of what you describe is perfectly acceptable as a PA


    The £1k gift, no. You can source it for him, but use his card to pay for it.


    The food, you need to arrange a petty cash box with him.


    Otherwise the company pay him that salary to live and breath the company, the PA is there as a PERSONAL assistant, not a corporate one.
  • in my opinion it is not acceptable at all to expect you to use your own cash. What If you don't have a credit card? what if you don't have the spare money?
  • agrinnall
    agrinnall Posts: 23,344 Forumite
    10,000 Posts Combo Breaker
    I'd suggest to him that he arrange a corporate card in your name which you can use for his personal purchases, then he can handle repaying the company.
  • TELLIT01
    TELLIT01 Posts: 17,508 Forumite
    Tenth Anniversary 10,000 Posts Name Dropper PPI Party Pooper
    No way should you be using your own money to purchase anything for him or anybody else in the company. If he tries it again tell him you will need money from petty cash to pay for it.
  • Just wondering who asks someone to buy a £1k present on their personal card and then pays them back?

    The sort of person who wants to hide the expenditure .....someone having an affair springs to mind.
  • xapprenticex
    xapprenticex Posts: 1,760 Forumite
    He is clearly living on a different planet.
  • paddyrg
    paddyrg Posts: 13,543 Forumite
    Suggest he gives you a float which you'll use and return the balance and receipts at the end.

    I periodically organise short, multi-million pound projects - that means sometimes I'm doing deals and spending money in huge amounts in short periods and my time is very much at a premium. I still have to get 'real world' stuff done, so seeing as I'm working 12 hour days, none of that will get done unless someone cheaper does it for me, including getting service washes for clothes, buying stuff I need, etc. I'm not in this guy's league but can totally see how you doing some of his 'life' stuff enables him to be more effective for the company.
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