Other Duties as Assigned

Other duties as assigned. = You will do anything from managing new employees to cleaning the gunk out of the fridge weekly. What gives? 

Other duties as assigned…

This one phrase is probably on almost all job descriptions, especially administrative type positions. It is a catch all; a way to add almost anything to one’s job description.

Over the years I’ve begun to really hate that phrase. I’ve found that some supervisors use that phrase in your job description in order to add any duties that they and/or the “favored employees” do not want to do to your own increasing workload.

Does this sound familiar?

I’ve been in the working world for many years now and in one position I’ve held, it wasn’t until eight years, yes, EIGHT years later that I found out a few of my daily and weekly job duties were actually my supervisor’s duties. As it turns out, at other offices it is the supervisors that must do these types of reports and things. It is just a little upsetting when you were hired and given your job duties and you were told X and Y were yours and come to find out they never were this position’s responsibility in the past. The supervisor didn’t feel like doing them anymore; therefore, “other duties as assigned” apparently came into play.

I fully understand that some supervisors and coworkers are overworked and have way too much on their plates. If this is the case, the mangers above these overworked people should step up and figure something out. What should happen and what does happen are two very different things however. If everyone had a fair and good work ethic I think jobs everywhere would get a lot, even a little bit better and we wouldn’t have these little “other duties as assigned” issues as often as we do now. Maybe, maybe not.

Have you experienced this issue of have more random duties added to you list of things to do at your admin position? If so, how do you deal with all the extra work?

If you bring up being overworked are accommodations made?

I don’t know about you but I’m just tired of hearing… “Ya, if you could do that from now on, that would be great.” (courtesy of one of the best movies ever, Office Space)