Story time everyone! Gather ’round…
Once upon a time there was a girl who had a rather busy job doing all sorts of random things at a school at a university. She took care of the schedule for her school, answered phone calls, moved chairs and other items…pretty much anything asked. As part of her job doing the schedule, she was often called upon to schedule pretty important things, so she kept very close track of all of her phone calls in a single, chronological log, and kept all of her emails.
One day, the girl’s boss’s boss’s administrative assistant called. One of those important people called about one of those very important things that was scheduled. They were under the impression that it was scheduled for a different day than the girl had scheduled it. The girl, having the emails, brought one forward which described the original date of the event. They countered that the very important people had claimed to have called and “confirmed on the phone” the change of date. The girl asked what date the call had come. The answer was “sometime after August 2nd.” The girl looked back through that chronological log of every phone call and message she had ever gotten and confirmed that no one had called to change the date.
The moral of this story is that organization can not just help you save a little time or money. It can help you save your job. If you are consistently more organized and thorough, then even when you come up against the word of “more important” people, you will fair alright because you will be able to go straight to the document, the phone call, the email, the fax, the notes…and produce the truth.
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