Business News Digest

NATION
In-house jobs aplentyfor office managers
NEW YORK -- Ever given your boss a haircut or paid her rent? How about shooing trapped bats from your office? And surely you've stored cremation ashes in your desk at one time or another?
If you answered yes to any of those questions, you're probably an office manager. A new study shows that more than half of office managers report performing at least 10 different jobs in a given week, including customer relations, computer support, human resources and accounting.
Nearly 75 percent of office managers consider themselves workplace housekeeping supervisors, while 71 percent lend an ear as office psychologist.
More than 8,000 office managers reported their job descriptions on the Staples Web site.
Too busy to enjoyyour vacation time?
NEW YORK -- Vacation time. You worked long and hard and now you have a couple of weeks to kick back and get away from it all. Too bad you went and made yourself too important to enjoy it.
More than half of workers fail to use all of their allotted vacation days, including 30 percent who say they take less than half, according to a recent survey. Many of the overworked are managers, under pressure to do more in less time with fewer employees, said Robert Morgan of professional staffing provider Hudson, which conducted the survey.
The survey was based on a national poll of more than 2,000 workers.
Associated Press