We’ve gone on before about how your boss is probably monitoring your email so it would be unwise to record your true feelings about your job for prosperity. Even if you’re not as paranoid as us, there is still the off-chance that the email will end up in the wrong hands. Especially if you send it to those wrong hands.
Case in point: we recently heard the story of a young administrative assistant who unwittingly sent an email to the very person she was talking shit about. That person happened to be a supervisor. Luckily the email wasn’t too inflamatory, but it was enough to let the supervisor know that the admin was talking shit about her. Not too savvy.
Unfortunately, the admin still didn’t learn her lesson. Less than two weeks later, she whipped out another email that went to the very person she was talking shit about. This time it was a different supervisor, and this time she was a little more colorful in her language. We heard the term “fucking wench” may have been included. Ouch.
To make things even worse, her review happened to be the same week. Double ouch.
So people, seriously, don’t talk shit over email. That’s what smoke/coffee breaks are for. And if you do have an itch to email, double check your fucking “Send To”.
We love Cafepress. The whole site exists because of people who say something witty or snarky and then go, “Man, I wish that was on a T-shirt!” Because on Cafepress you can make it into a T-shirt. Or a messenger bag.
Speaking of messenger bags, the one above is just one part of a whole collection of boss-hating gear found at Flippin’ Sweet. If communicating via messenger bag isn’t your thing, there are also hoodies, hats, mugs, aprons, doggie T-shirts (we know), baby onesies (seriously, we know), and thong underwear. Yeah, because you really want to mention your boss on your crotch.
Go here for more, but don’t say we didn’t warn you.
Sometimes your job gets to you. And sometimes your job takes over and wreaks havoc on your poor, fragile immune system. It’s one thing to catch the office bug, but to be the assistant to an evil boss exposes you to far worse conditions than the flu. Sometimes it’s full-blown PTSD.
We’d like to encourage you to quit before it gets to that, so we’ve compiled the Four Levels of Assistanthood to Evil Bosses. If it makes you feel any better, Dante had seven levels of hell. You only get to experience four. How’s that for efficiency?
Level 1: Your skin starts breaking out, your hair is limp and sad-looking, dark circles start forming under your eyes. You’re gaining weight due to stress eating. You’ve also started biting your nails like you’re in second grade again. You’re not showering as carefully as you used to either, and you don’t really have the energy to do laundry regularly anymore. Also, you’re jumpier than usual.
Level 2: The dark circles have fully formed and have been enhanced by the red of your bloodshot eyes. When you hear your boss’s voice, you experience a muscular spasm, probably in your neck. Or an eye twitch. This is because of all the stress you’re internalizing. Your personal hygiene is driving people away, but your skittishness makes you grateful to be left alone. Fortunately though, at this point the damage is still reversible.
Level 3: You’re in dangerous territory. That muscular twitch is now a humongous knot that leaves you in chronic pain. Even worse, due to the continued internalization of stress, you’ve developed heart palpitations and occasionally hear voices. You’ll need the help of a professional to reverse the damage, but there is still hope for you. Quit now, before it’s too late!
Level 4: Red zone alert! You’re either insane for letting it get to this point or you’re a caseworthy study for Stockholm syndrome. Those voices from Level 3 are now telling you jokes and keeping you company as you stay after hours at the office sorting through data and looking for order in the chaos. Hopefully you have close friends or family that will stage an intervention and end your suffering. If not, we encourage you to use those sick days and get to know your local psychiatrist.
Kindergarten is better than work. It has cookies, fingerpainting, and–most importantly–naptime. Now, a sleep researcher/consultant is trying to convince companies to let their employees have naptime. It turns out that British Airways, Nike, and Pizza Hut already allow their employees to take naps, prompting us to simultaneously consider a career in the airline industry and figure out why our pizza is always cold when it arrives.
“When I talk to people about napping at work, most look at me like I’m talking about smoking crack at work,” she said, chuckling. “Others say they couldn’t survive without a nap. It’s a very polarizing idea.”
Smoking crack at work? Now that’s how you boost company morale.
To print out this article and use it in your PowerPoint presentation “Why Sleeping At My Desk Actually Ups My Productivity,” go here.
We often cite Careerbuilder.com stories on this site, so it’s extra cool that this time a Careerbuilder article cited us.
Rachel Zupek’s article When Bosses Attack uses several stories from this site as examples of particularly bad boss behavior.
Check out the article and see if one of your favorites made the cut.
Seems like nearly every celebrity had some kind of “kooky” first job that they occasionally bring up in interviews – publicists apparently love to humanize them with “look where I started out” stories. High-brow bizness rag Forbes has compiled a list for easy reference.
You heard the one about Brad Pitt in a chicken costume, right? How about J.Lo in a law office? Or what about Fifty Cent’s illustrious past?
“For better or for worse, first jobs can prove seminal to a star’s career development. Rapper 50 Cent says his first job as a teenage drug dealer in Queens, N.Y., taught him how to manage his current music empire, from dealing with distributors to marketing new products to customers.”
So much for that MBA from Harvard, suckers.
We were going to make this into some kind of “buck up, little camper – things will get better”, but eh, fuck it. Take it as entertainment. (Though we wish more celebrities had to start off as personal assistants.)
Celebrity First Jobs
The thread on Television Without Pity devoted to Paula Abdul is subtitled “Better Living Through Pharmaceuticals.” It’s appropriate, considering my most frequent reaction to watching her on American Idol is “dude, whatever she’s on, I really need some.” Besides Idol, Paula has other projects: a movie about the Bratz dolls (no, seriously) and an upcoming reality show, for two. However, according to this blog post, Paula torpedoed a recent meeting about a cosmetics endorsement by answering her cell phone in the middle.
I like to think it’s so obvious that we don’t need to say it here, but don’t answer your cell phone in the middle of a meeting. I mean, the fact that the damn thing even has a ringer on while you’re in a conference room means trouble, because as anyone who has ever owned a freaking cell phone knows, the law of karma means people only call you at the worst possible times. If this rule has somehow escaped you, I’d like to offer up a few others:
- Don’t answer your cell phone during a job interview
- If you have an important call you’re expecting, put the phone on vibrate
- If the phone call in question is, say, your mom calling to say your cousin just went into labor, you’re allowed to answer it- after you let the other people in the room know why you’re taking the call, and then you should
- Answer the phone while out in the hallway
The kicker to this whole article? Apparently, Paula has gone through seven personal assistants this year. Seven? What is she trying to do, out-Naomi Naomi?
This whole thing has made me very tense. Clearly, I do need some of whatever Paula is on.
–Lilit
Today the fashion world mourns the loss of the awesomely-named Isabella Blow. Isabella, a stylist and fashionista in London, apparently died from cancer.
Isabella got her start as an assistant to two of the most famous names in the fashion business, Vogue contributor Andre Leon Talley and the woman who was an indirect inspiration for this site, Anna Wintour. Let’s face it: anybody who can work for Anna Wintour and come out with a respectable career in the fashion world has got to be hardcore. And she could pull off some eccentric outfits like nobody’s business.
We’ll miss Isabella Blow for her style, but we here at Save the Assistants will miss her as a reminder that a former assistant can always go on to glory. Well played, Isabella.
There are times when you just need to rant. We fully support that, of course, but sometimes we get things that don’t quite fit with our blog – namely, non-assistant related stories. Fortunately, there’s WorkRant.com.
Beware though. These folks take their ranting fucking seriously. Sample rant:
Our chief exec just got her annual pay-rise …. of £775k. It brings her paypacket for this year to £1.59m. We minions got £200. Do the fucking maths. I HATE THIS FUCKING JOB AND THIS WHOLE FUCKING INDUSTRY. DIE DIE DIE!
Ahem.
I think it’s pretty clear how much we love both the show and the character Ugly Betty, played beautifully by Ms. America Ferrera. Because we were certainly not perfect assistants in our day, we also love the prissy sycophant Marc (Michael Urie) and bitchy receptionist Amanda (Becki Newton). Last night’s episode of the show centered around an Administrative Professionals’ Day party for all the Mode assistants at a Medieval Times-style theme restaurant. Lessons learned from this episode:
- Henry is the perfectest pretend TV boyfriend ever
- You should not plan an Admin Professionals Day party at a place where one of the admins was previously employed
- It was changed from Secretaries Day to Admin Professionals Day in 1998
- An acceptable present for your assistant: first class tickets to Mexico for her entire family
- Bosses should not call their assistants during the party, especially to make them do work
- It is not only permissible to get drunk during said party, it is encouraged
- Henry is the perfectest nerdiest glasses-wearing hot TV boyfriend ever
Um, anyway. That’s how you know this is just a TV show: the assistant wins in the end. Ah well. They call it escapism for a reason.
