The expectation that certain employees serve coffee to others has become a hot topic. Traditionally, serving coffee was often an implicit part of a secretarial job. Today, most of the classical secretarial jobs have grown into administrative assistant positions that call for skills in such areas as computers, planning, and organizing. Coffee serving skills do not fit into this picture.
On a broader basis, as company hierarchies have flattened, there has been increased emphasis on respect, open communication, and treating all employees as resources. In this type of setting, employees are expected to help each other, but they are not expected to wait on each other. This means that administrative assistants are not expected to bring coffee to their managers, but would be willing to do so if the manager were in a crunch. For the most part, the manager gets his or her own coffee, and may even bring a cup for his or her administrative assistant.
It is just a matter of time before coffee duty is eliminated from job descriptions, but it is not going away without a fight. After all, there are still some executives who cling to this tradition as tightly as they cling to that first cup in the morning.
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