April 21st is Administrative Professionals Day 2004 (also called Secretary's Day, Administrative Assistants Day, or Exceptional Assistants Day). Instead of the traditional gift you have given your administrative assistant, how about one to make him or her deliriously happy: let your assistant fire one client.
Several years ago, I told my secretary she could fire one client, no questions asked. After she picked herself off the floor, she chose a client that surprised me. Turns out that this client, while perfectly cordial to me, was consistently rude to her on the phone and made inappropriate comments to her when he came into the office. I sent the client a nice letter telling him I would be unable to represent him any longer, and my secretary told me it was one of the best presents she had ever gotten.
The moral to this story is that there are clients who, if they treat your staff badly, don't deserve your hard work. Every day you work for them sends a message that you value their business more than the happiness of your staff. The trouble is that you probably don't even know who these clients are. So ask your assistant, and go ahead and give yourself a little bonus and fire your least-liked client too.
Of course, flowers are also nice.
UPDATE: Seems like Evan and I are on the same wavelength. I hadn't read this post when I wrote mine. I wonder if we're talking about the same client?
I worked for an attorney many years ago who did something similar for me, except that it wasn't Admins Day. One day, technical difficulties were affecting our office phones so that everytime I answered an incoming call, the call would disconnect. So, after the fourth or fifth call, the phone finally connected to a belligerant client who berated me for hanging up on him. Even though I apologized and tried to explain that it was a mechanical problem, he would not accept my explanation. So, when I announced his call to my boss, I also informed my boss how I'd been treated. After my boss completed his conversation with the client, he informed me that he'd advised the client, in a polite way, what to do with the phone and to never bother calling back. It's been over 25 years since that happened and I've received many lunches, flowers, candy, and gifts from mgmt, but I still remember that as the best expression of appreciation from a boss.
Posted by: Rita | April 12, 2006 at 09:16 AM