I did a lot of temp secretarial work when I was in college. I could type. I could use those newfangled word processor programs. That I was a dude doing these supposedly chick things amused the people who I was sent to work for, but that's not the point of this post.
Some office work is pretty standard. A bit of typing. Answer the phone. Take a message. File something. That kind of thing. Some is not standard, ranging from minor things like "where exactly should the phone messages be placed" to "just how does one get the copying center to send out a 65 page document, bound in this particular fashion, to this specific subset of employees." It was always pretty stunning how much the "bosses" expected me, a temp, to know things like the latter. It's like, hey man, I am not familiar with your internal company practices. They don't teach that on the word processor training software at the temp office. If you ask me to do that I am not going to have any idea how to do it. If you want people to know that stuff you have to hire them and train them.
