I attended a Christian Camp where the object of my observation (later Liz) is currently employed. She is a main office manager there and handles information stream that has to be coordinated and communicated so that different parties are well informed and organization runs smoothly. Her office is located in the front of the building. There are two other girls, one at the reception desk, and the other one in the office that is inside a bigger room. Her own office is a very small room with a door that she never closed when I was observing. The girls noted that she never closes the door, unless she holds a private meeting and even when this happens it does not lasts longer than 5-10 minutes.



The office is a room about 6 by 8 feet with a window and blinds, there is also a closet room where all the office supplies such as envelopes, cardstock, boxes and brochures of the camp are kept. There is a big computer monitor on her table that takes up most of the space. On a right hand side there is a phone and, a few stacks of post-it notes and a flipping organizer with the phone numbers. There is also a big calendar on the wall to the right and the rest of it is covered with letter size pictures of her nephews and nieces, there are 5 pictures total. There are numerous huge folders and special literature for the managers on the shelves behind her desk, as I noted from the titles on the sides of the editions.

Liz is 25 years old and she has been working in the organization for two and a half years already. Her husband works there too although in a different departments and while I was there I have not seen him or even hear him call. She is currently pregnant about two months. As I was observing I noticed that she left a couple of times in an hour time period to go to the restroom, as she was telling it to the other ladies. The culture in the organization is the following, when someone leaves everyone else in the office needs to know where the person is going and how long will he/she be absent. Every time she left, she said she was sorry but her physical condition would not allow her to wait longer thus it was necessary. The other girls were smiling and said it was no problem.

I noted that the phones were not ringing very often. I counted 8 calls during that hour that I was there. Each of the girls has a phone and everyone else in the building as well so when the phone rings and the question does not concern the main office area of work the girls switch the caller to the needed person. Liz personally answered the phone only once when the caller wanted to talk about the exception request form, which is specifically filled out when an accident occurs with a child during camp season, and she is the only one in the office who is responsible for that. She spoke on the phone for about 5 minutes. Her voice was very cheerful and genuinely understanding. The conversation from what I reported was about a 10 year old boy who broke his arm on the first day he visited camp. She promised to take care of the matter and give the caller a call back when all is resolved. She hung up the phone gently and did not comment on the call to the girls. She looked straight back at her computer screen and within a few minutes wrote done something on a post-it note and stuck in on the desk in front of her keyboard.

In about 15 minutes a lady from the finance office(later-Tina) came to talk about the refunds that were yet to be approved. They talked about the causes of the requests that Liz is responsible for and Tina asked a few question about the eligibility of those cases, and if they coincided with our policies. Both of them spoke in a soft calm voice and looked straight at each other. No pressure was felt from either side and the matter was dealt with in a few minutes with a positive result for both of them, as was seen from their faces. Tina got up and said that she will send the invoices with the stated amount of the refunds as soon as she prints them out and Liz thanked her for being on top of things. As soon as Tina left, Liz stretched her arms in the air and yawned, after this minute break she started tying very fast. She had a heap of papers on her lap that she was looking at and than typing whatever she had into the computer.

For ten minutes straight Liz was typing and looked very concentrated. After that she grabbed a plastic can of almonds from under her table and put a little pile on her a piece of paper in front of her. She told me that the doctor told her to eat lots of nuts so that she can get enough good fats without getting too big. This break lasted about 5 minutes after which Liz got up to go to the restroom again.

In total she went to the bathroom 2 times while I was there, about 3-5 minutes each time. She answered 1 phone call which lasted about 5 minutes and spoke with a colleague for about 8-10 minutes. The rest of the time was spent on typing and reading something from the papers on her lap, thus most of the time she spent typing (80%). As I found out later they were parents? evaluations that she was putting in a data base and that she later had to analyze. When I was leaving the office it was about 2 PM and Liz was at work for 5 hours already, she was starting to feel tired and sleepy. The girls told me that it was very unlike her but because she was pregnant she was getting tired very easily. Liz did not show tiredness by irritation or any other negative expression, but rather she was repeatedly yawning and stretching in her chair. Liz smiled when she remembered about me being there, looked up at me and generally seemed very easy going, although we practically did not have interaction or a prolonged conversation.

As I was leaving the office Liz and the girls told me that this was a very quite time, after camp season was over. Usually they said their phone lines are busy 10 hours a day and no one has a luxury to go to the restroom twice in one hour. I said I was glad to visit at such a calm time and not be a distraction. Each of them thanked me for coming when I was leaving.