Is truth stranger than television?

So what is it really like to be a secretary?

If you've watched AMC's "Madmen," a TV drama set in a 1960s ad agency on New York's Madison Avenue, you've noticed the secretaries constantly typing away. They take the phone calls from clients, wives and mistresses for their bosses. They grab suit coats and cups of coffee for their bosses. They wear cute outfits and their hair is always perfect. These secretaries are key to the success of the company, yet their jobs sometimes are trivialized as mere "housewives" of the agency.

If you've ever watched NBC's "The Office," Pam Beesley (now Pam Halpert) was the epitome of the modern-day office receptionist and secretary. She had a bowl of candy on her desk. She fixed the malfunctioning printer and filled the empty paper tray. She had to deal with every annoying phone call and often act as a psychologist for her colleagues and their clients. When her boss was busy, she took over and did his job.

The Courier-News was curious about what it's really like to be a secretary. So we talked to Bridget Moore, the office manager for Tongue N Chic Dental Boutique, 14 Douglas Ave., Elgin, and asked her what her job's all about.

1. What's a typical day entail? Well, I have two typical days. When we don't have patients, I'm doing insurance paperwork, which is boring and tedious. When we have patients, I hold the hand of the patients and joke about what's going on in the world with them, on top of handling the money.

2. What's the most amusing phone call you have received? I get these phone calls with all of these detailed questions. It sounds like they're about to make an appointment and then they say they're just calling for a friend. I'm thinking to myself, "why would you ask me 21 questions and then not make an appointment?" When I was (a secretary for a real estate agency), people would call up and leave a message saying, "I'm calling about the white house." They would give no street address or anything. I'd be like, do you know how many white houses are out there?

3. What's the weirdest thing about your office? We serve alcohol in this office. We give patients a wine or beer before their appointment to calm them down. We also promote dark chocolate and I have Tootsie Rolls on my desk, which are not sugar-free. It's candy, so people think that's weird, considering it's a dental office. But red wine and dark chocolate are good for your health. Our doctor also has a Craftsman tool cart and he'll come into a patient's room with a hand drill and turn it on and ask the patient if they're ready to go.

4. What's the biggest misconception about secretaries? That we're boring. We're not boring. I know so many secretaries who have so many big lives outside of an office.

I'm a medieval re-enactor. ... We do heavy-weapons combat, have merchants, have a feast and dancing afterwards.

Secretaries are also the heart of an office. Any day that I have off, I'll get a call from the doctor. ... I left him a two-page essay on where everything is: where are the pass codes, where is the iPod, where are the X-rays and notes about all of the patients. I still get a call, "How do I do this?"

5. How has the job changed? The technology is different. I used to have to answer a phone system with 121 lines. I was very good at it. But we didn't have e-mail. That only happened over the last 10 years.