^ You come on an anonymous message board to disparage your departmental support staff for not working hard enough and I'm the ahole? That's rich!
You really think that observing that these are relatively easy jobs is somehow "disparaging" those who do those jobs? Do you even soc, bro?
In the US we like to imbue the idea of "hard work" with moral significance, with the corollary being that people who don't "work hard" are morally inferior. Obviously this is a culturally-specific social construction. And it is why everyone in the US complains of being over-worked as a tactic for claiming the moral high ground.
I've been tt at three different universities, been department chair, hired department secretaries, and worked closely with them. I can confirm the observation that it is not an especially demanding job, and that there is much down time. That is not any kind of moral condemnation; simply an observation.