Define "Multi"

One of my really random job tasks at work is to act as "receptionist" - both by answering one of our three incoming phone lines, and also by greeting people as they come in for meetings.

Typically, people will come in, I'll send an "instant message" to the person meeting with them, and then I'll let them know what will happen, next.

Probably about 80% of the time, the reply to my "Your appointment is here" message is "conf room" (which I learned early on means that I should ask the people to have a seat in the conference room. And - as I'm sure those of you who are paying attention can guess - that response is the one I typically get from the boss. Yes. That's right. My boss doesn't really put full sentences into his IMs. He barely puts them into spoken conversations. But I've gotten used to that.) (Not that I like it, but I've gotten used to it.)

Usually, after I get that "conf room" response, I ask the people waiting to please go into the conference room and take a seat, explaining that whoever (it's not always the boss) will be with them shortly. And, usually, the people go in and either take a seat or wander around the room looking at the books on the shelves.

Today, however, I got a response I wasn't really expecting. A woman in her 20s walked in and said she had an appointment. Before I had a chance to say much of anything, she had seated herself in one of the chairs in the "waiting area" in front of my desk.

I sent my usual IM, and got the usual response of "conf room." So I stood up from my desk, walked around to her and said "He's asked that you have a seat in the conference room." She didn't respond, but kept staring at the screen on her phone.

I walked into the conference room and straightened some of the chairs (another meeting had been in their, earlier, and the chairs were all over the place), and was finishing up when my boss walked in through the other door. He looked at me with a "Where is she?" look, and I said "She's apparently coming in a moment or two."

I exited the conference room, walked up to her, and said "He's waiting in the conference room for you." She didn't look up. She kept typing and staring at her keyboard. Then, suddenly, she glanced up at me and said "Oh. Oh. Sorry. I was multi-tasking," as she grabbed her bag and walked into the conference room.

I heard her repeat the same thing ("I'm so sorry. I was multi-tasking.") as she introduced herself.

Which, finally, leads me to my point: How does she figure she was multi-tasking? I mean, she was doing her texting (or whatever) while sitting in a chair. Granted, yes, she was probably also breathing at the same time, but I don't think that counts as "multi-" anything, really.

Had she been playing with her phone while also actively listening to me and following directions, that might have been a little closer to multi-tasking, but even that is pretty flimsy. Or if she had stopped in the middle of placing a book order to play receptionist and organize the conference room while also trying to find the answer to two author questions, possibly I could agree that she was multi-tasking. (Of course, then she'd also have been me in that moment...)

Perhaps she needs to learn the difference between "multi-tasking" and "uni-tasking." Or, at the very least, she should learn that there is a huge difference between "multi-tasking" and "sitting in a chair and ignoring you so I can stay in my own little world."