Author Archives: Bridget Willard

About Bridget Willard

Bridget Willard is the Office Manager, Content Writer, and Social Media Manager for Riggins Construction & Management, Inc. CSLB 335720

CMU

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vocabularySome construction terms are more cryptic than others but this week’s post is for a simple acronym: CMU.

CMU stands for concrete masonry unit and is used in various ways; when I was a kid CMU blocks supported planks that held up the stereo system and record player (emblematic of the 1970’s).

According to the Construction Dictionary, 9th Edition © 2001 published by the Greater Phoenix, Arizona Chapter #98 of the National Association of Women in Construction concrete masonry unit (CMU) is defined as follows:

A solid or hollow masonry unit made from water, portland cement, and suitable aggregates such as sand, gravel, crushed stone, bituminous or anthracite cinder, expanded clay or shale, pumice, volcanic scoria, aircooled or expanded blast furnace slag, with or without other materials and molded into various shapes.

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Office Manager Tip: Who Am I Again?

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Depending upon the size of the company the job title “Office Manager” may take on a slightly different flavor.  Some office managers simply manage personnel whose individual job titles and tasks make up the entire skill set required in smaller offices. The title of “Office Manager” can encompass a mind-boggling array of skill levels, personality types, and even schools of discipline.

One day you may be the Accounts Payable Clerk and another, the entire Collections Department.  You may field calls like a Receptionist while dealing with a Human Resources issue.  By morning you are the head of the Marketing Department and in the afternoons you clean the toilets–well, maybe it doesn’t go that far, but you get the point. The diversity of tasks goes way beyond their titles and presumed prestige (or lack thereof).  You may need to actually switch personalities in between. Continue reading →

Balustrade

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vocabularyHave you ever played that game where a word is given and all of the players have to submit a definition?  The definition with the most votes wins.

About ten years ago a group of my friends played that game but with a dictionary. Until I looked it up today, azotemia‘s only meaning to me was the winning definition: the condition where food particles are inbetween your teeth, especially green, leafy vegetables. This quickly became the running joke in our circle of friends. Even today, without a second thought, we say, “You have azotemia,” and the recipient quickly checks their teeth.

Would you believe that the root of balustrade, baluster, comes from both the Italian and Greek words for the wild pomegranate flower?  The supports were often shaped much like this flower.  Here is the etymology according to the Online Etymology Dictionary: Continue reading →

Office Manager Tip: Process Your Laundry, I mean Invoices

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As I mentioned in my first post, I often equate routine office work with housework. To further exploit that theme, today’s topic is laundry, I mean, accounts payable.

To the degree that the diversity of your tasks vary, this tip becomes more applicable. Like laundry,  where the whites and the colors are sorted, I sort my AP invoices before processing. For me this means job-related invoices (from subcontractors) and overhead expenses. This is the first batching.

If you’re like my husband and further sort the laundry by fabric type, then sort out your AP batches by due date, vendor number or name; you get the gist. For example, not only do I sort out my AP invoices by job-related and overhead expenses, I further sort out job-related invoices by the job number. Continue reading →

Still Think Social Media is “Just” a Fad?

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Socialnomics put out their first Social Media Revolution video July 30, 2009; this May 5, 2010, video is very similar but the statistics are updated.

This is a must-see for anyone who wonders if incorporating social media into your business strategy is important.

Social Media Revolution 2 is a refresh of the original video with new and updated social media & mobile statistics that are hard to ignore. Based on the book Socialnomics by Erik Qualman.

It is absolutely mind blowing to see how our culture and the way we communicate has shifted.

All of the statistics mentioned in this video with their sources are located in the Socialnomics blog post here: Statistics Show Social Media is Bigger than You Think.

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