18-year-old receptionist told by boss to "stick strictly to your job description" complies : 'It was absolute chaos by the end of the day'

Helping out around the office when you've got all your tasks under control is a nice thing to do and helps boost the team's efficiency. This, however, works in reverse when you have things on your plate, and doing other people's work for them is preventing you from getting to those things. At that point, you'll start creating a bottleneck of productivity while things sit waiting to pass across your desk. When you inevitably have a conversation with your boss about what it is you're spending your time on, and if you're behind, they might tell you to just "stick to your own work," which you'll get frustrated about, but the reality is that they're probably right. This scenario arises occasionally, and, of course, sometimes other motivations may be at play. Like, for instance, in this story where this receptionist felt that her boss was trying to remind her to stay in her lane and keep her at the level of her station.

Of course, sometimes you're pulling weight far above your pay grade and keeping things in the organization running above someone of your station, and, well, you really don't want to be doing that without recognition and the proper payment, anyway, beyond proving that you're capable of doing so. With that in mind, this sounds like a win all around here, since she got to stick to her usual tasks and got to watch the chaos unfolding.