Monthly Archive for December, 2006

ending the year on a good note

Published on December 22, 2006 in My job ain't so bad. 0 Comments

Let me tell you a little about me. I used to have a really horrible assistant job. Like, really horrible. And then I quit without having a new one. And then I went to the Bahamas just because I could. And the day before I left I got offered a really wonderful job. I am still at the really wonderful job now. Evidence?

Today I came back from a meeting to find a Post-It note on my computer screen. The note read Look under your desk for a gift from [Name of boss] and [Name of boss' wife]. I look under my desk and find a brand-new, very cute yoga mat. It means that

a) my boss, and his super cool wife, know how much I enjoy yoga, which means

b) they know and care about me as a person outside of this job, and

c) there is hope. There is hope, because a year ago I was at a job that made me so depressed I didn’t have a life outside of work.

I leave you with this, assistants of the world. Save the Assistants will be off next week doing maintenance and other fun things. We’ll be back in the office with you on January 2, still nursing a wicked New Year’s hangover.

-Lilit

celebrity assistant rant

Published on December 22, 2006 in Celebrity Assistant Soapbox. 0 Comments Tags: .

From Scudfish.com comes this list of reasons why you should never “degrade yourself” by becoming a Hollywood assistant. (Did someone have a bad experience?)

  1. Booking “just the right” airline ticket and hotel room for the rat-faced bastard because he or she is supposedly too busy “networking” (throwing up in yet another punchbowl at yet another celebrity party).
  2. Setting up seven martini lunches with other celebrity’s assistants who act snootier than you do. Nothing ever gets decided on until the Association of Celebrity Personal Assistants (ACPA) seniority pecking order has been established, and of course before coming to an agreement on who of your celebrities are more in the tabloids (more important) at the moment.
  3. Taking all those new (quote: “scary but pretty-looking…”) toilet paper designs for a test drive because your emperor or empress doesn’t want untested and potentially debilitating things near their sphincter.
  4. In the feature film movie credits you get listed after the seamstress, caterer, pool boy, cleaning lady and the mentally challenged (but sweet) guy that tended to pets. 

For the rest, click here. 

walking on broken glasses

Published on December 21, 2006 in Horror Stories. 0 Comments

I was working as a personal assistant to a magazine editor. The man had no understanding of boundaries. He would even have me do things like tell his girlfriend he was too busy to talk to her because he thought that his power turned her on.  One day he called me while I was on the way to work and told me to come to his apartment instead of the office. He claimed  it was an “emergency.” I showed up at his apartment. There he was in his PJs. The “emergency”? He couldn’t find his glasses. Apparently he was totally blind without them! After doing a quick scan of his bedroom, I found the glasses in a crack between his bed and dresser. This guy had been constantly promising that I’d get more interesting (read: “magazine-related”) work to do, but it never panned out. I quit that very day, when I realized that if I stayed I would always be his glasses-fetcher. -Submitted by Daisy, New York City

workplace distraction: how to passively, yet somewhat aggressively battle your boss

Published on December 20, 2006 in Junk Drawer. 0 Comments

Since the season of giving is upon us, we thought it might be nice to share some advice regarding how to deal with a boss that is driving you crazy. But, because we don’t want you to have your stocking stuffed with a pink slip, we thought it might be fun to examine how each of us play the passive, yet somewhat aggressive card when yelled at or generally belittled.

For example, Lilit’s favorite technique is to roll eyes and not care. Ashley prefers the silent scream, usually preceded by gritting of teeth and followed by a walk around the office.

What about you? Voodoo doll? Spiked coffee? General disdain? Share your strategerie in our Comments section.

crazy lady and the dog

Published on December 20, 2006 in Horror Stories. 0 Comments

I was an assistant to Crazy Lady. One day, Crazy Lady found a stray
Rottweiller in the parking lot. She told me that she was going to
wait in the parking lot with the dog until Animal Control came to
pick it up. Even though the dog seemed friendly, Crazy Lady was
afraid it might attack someone. Plus, she didn’t want the dog roaming
the streets.

About 45 minutes later, Crazy Lady’s boss called me to find out where
she was. I told him the story, and he hung up in a huff. Later that
day Crazy Lady confronted me:

Crazy Lady: Did you tell Bob I was in the parking lot with the dog?

ME: Yeah, why?

Crazy Lady (screaming): YOU SHOULDN’T HAVE DONE THAT! HE HATES ME!
HE’S LOOKING FOR ANY EXCUSE TO FIRE ME!

ME: Sorry, I didn’t think it was a big deal.

Crazy Lady: YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER! I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU DID THIS TO ME!!!!! I’M GOING TO GET FIRED!!!! I KNOW IT!!! AND IT’S
ALL BECAUSE OF YOU!!! ARE YOU TRYING TO GET ME FIRED??? I THINK YOU ARE!!!

ME: Well, what should I have done? Lied about where you were?

Crazy Lady: YES! EXACTLY!!!!

When our “conversation” ended, I went around the corner and flipped
her off.

A couple of months later, when I told Crazy Lady I’d found a new job
and was leaving, she started bawling and kept repeating, “Is it
because of me? Is it because of me?”

“Yes,” I muttered. “Yes.”

- Submitted by “Tired”, Los Angeles

tea and bitchery

Published on December 19, 2006 in Horror Stories. 0 Comments

I am job hunting. I love tea. I  have spent hours online reading and checking various online communities about loose tea. Definitions of different kinds, origins, best at breakfast time (personally I love Earl Grey), all of these have become a great and quiet hobby. You would think that once a downtown tea shop opens up, it would be a perfect match. I go down to the place with my resume and I “interview.” I see that the place is not only smaller than how it looked online, but offered less than even the website, with no place to sit and shmooze. Worst Date Place Ever.

Now mind you I went to a decent college and am working on a master’s degree.  I know how to make tea (black teas- 3-5 minutes; green 5 minutes; herbals and fruit teas 5-8 minutes). But due to my “lack of professional barista experience” I could not get hired to work at this tea house. I should have graduated from Starbucks University, since my actual college degree isn’t helping me get jobs.

Lesson Learned: do not put real almond chunks in tea drinks (the chump I am, I ordered a drink from the place), there is a real good chance that while walking to the subway, you’ll choke on these tiny bits and wonder what the hell you just drank. It tastes like rejection. Or bile. – Submitted by Charlie, New York City

advice for assistants: when you have a day off, know the difference

Published on December 19, 2006 in Survival Guide. 0 Comments

According to AM 1220 in Canada, more than half of bosses take their work on vacation with them over the holidays. I’d like to use this moment to quote one of my all-time favorite Calvin and Hobbes strips: one Saturday, Calvin’s dad gets up at 6 AM to shovel snow and putter around the house. Calvin manages to force himself out of bed around noon and sees his dad working away, then snarks ”At least when I have a day off, I can tell the difference.”

Fight hard for those vacation days, assistants of the world. Make the best of them.

-Lilit

not-such-a-stranger on a train

Published on December 19, 2006 in Horror Stories. 0 Comments

I had to go to a party the other night. It was a small departmental gathering. intimate setting, expensive wine and lots of cheap conversation. I have this rule now- when my coworker Annie goes home, I have to leave too, because I always get into trouble when she’s not there and I can’t mix open bar, free food, and work people on my own. She’s my barometer for allowed drunken behavior.

So, I left early at a decent hour, proud of myself for being a lady and not saying the wrong thing, at the right time, to the wrong person (which I’ve done before – sober). BUT, on my way home, I run into my boss  (who hadn’t been at the party) taking the same train. Me: slightly wasted. Him: innocent bystander & confused.

That was the longest eight minutes ever of my New York existence. Life has a real funny sense of humor. Unfortunately, I don’t when I’m drunk.- Submitted by Stella, New York City

judith regan: a former assistant tells all

Published on December 18, 2006 in Horror Stories. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Publishing diva Judith Regan was fired from her post as head of ReganBooks over the weekend. Depending who you ask, she was fired for either conceiving the ill-advised OJ Simpson If I Did It book and TV special, or for making anti-Semitic remarks against Rupert Murdoch’s lawyers on the phone. Tom Kane, co-founder of Commontales.com and a friend of Save the Assistants, was an assistant to the lady herself for a year in the late ’90s. He writes of his experience:

Lots of horrible things befall you when you work for Judith. One of my friends developed mysterious tumors on his back that only went away when he moved to France. For me, I was three weeks into my first real job when she fired my boss, who had been there all of five weeks herself. I had come to work at 8:30 that day and by 10:00 I was supervising the fortysomething vice-president who had hired me for the thirty minutes she was given to pack up her desk and vacate the premises. Walking outside with a woman I hardly knew whose career was suddenly in shambles was my first survival test, and I passed. Despite my fear of guilt by association, I gave the stunned woman a hug and a “good luck” before she wandered away carrying her pathetic cardboard box in her hands.

It gets worse. Read the rest here.

editor X-rated

Published on December 18, 2006 in Hall of Shame and Horror Stories. 0 Comments

I’m a junior editor at a newspaper. My friend and I are the two newest junior editors, so we always get stuck working on “Editor X” ’s stupid projects. Editor X is this boring, kind of plodding guy who is a higher-up at the paper. For some reason everyone continues to think that he’s really important, but everyone manages to weasel out of working with him because all his projects are time-consuming and no one ever reads them. Once, after making my friend and me turn around a story overnight with practically no help, he had the audacity to tell our managing editor that my friend and I were slackers.

It took awhile, but finally my friend and I got a break. One night the friend and I were both stuck late at the office working on yet another Editor X project. When my friend went by X’s office to show him some edits, he busted X (a devoted family man) watching porn on his computer! My friend never said anything, but X definitely knew about it. Since then, my friend and I have not been assigned to work on a single one of X’s stories, and X can’t look either of us in the eye anymore, especially when his wife and adorable children show up unannounced at the office. -Submitted by Daisy, New York City