In my ongoing efforts to fulfill my New Year’s Resolutions, I met my Primary Care Physician on Friday afternoon. I got what I needed from him: a few referrals from someone with Board Certifications. But by the time I actually shook hands with the good doctor, I was so thoroughly unimpressed by the first 90 minutes of my visit to his office that I wouldn’t have been surprised if he’d turned out to be not a doctor at all but a bartender, a plumber, an accountant, or the star of a new reality TV show. My lack of confidence came from the two medical assistants who spent almost an hour with me before I met their boss. At every step—measuring my height and weight, administering a pulmonary function test and EKG, asking me all the standard history questions—I felt that everything would go more smoothly and accurately if I were the one running the show. I glanced at their notes at one point and couldn’t help judging their misspelling of certain key words in my medical history (a relatively interesting story, if I do say so myself, that didn’t seem to impress them). I thought they were kidding when they told me to collect a urine sample and leave it on the tub in the bathroom, next to someone else’s pee. Both specimens were still there when I left an hour later.

The doctor, while a little rough around the edges, appeared to know what he was talking about, which is all that matters. But I got to thinking about the entry-level jobs that we’ve all had. Those foot-in-the-door-I-didn’t-need-to-go-to-college-for-this positions where you are below the lowest rung on the ladder and have so little power that it’s not even worth discussing: maybe they are actually more important than we think. Maybe how we perform isn’t just important in terms of doing the dirty boring work that no one else wants to do, but matters in shaping how people regard the organization. The receptionist was pissed at me from the minute I walked in the door because I was late (even though I called ahead), the assistants were dumb…so it doesn’t matter how great the doctor was—I probably won’t go back.

And so, receptionists, paralegals, session assistants, cashiers, take heart! We do matter. At least to each other.