We’re going to try and get out of Dodge a little early today, and we hope all of you do the same as well. As we prepare to celebrate Labor Day (hey, wait…a day for laborers? like us?), let’s comb through the best of this week’s happenings.
Topics to debate in the car:
STA is taking Labor Day off–we’ll see your bright and shiny faces on Tuesday, September 4th.
We’d like to thank all of you who wrote in to help us come up with some new examples for our Bossary. Here are the winners:
The PTP (Past Their Prime): Working for this person will open tons of doors for you in the industry- if you’re sixty-five. This boss used to be a hotshot, but now he has no real projects to work on and gets stuck in a corner office because everyone at the company is too scared to force him to retire. Instead of getting hands-on experience in your field, you get to bring him coffee six times a day while he lectures you about how this business just doesn’t have integrity anymore.
Winning suggestion: Martin Landau as Bob Ryan on “Entourage,” submitted by Taylor M
The Micromanaging Jackass: This one is fairly self-explanatory. Did you put everything in alphabetical order? Well, you should have also color coded it. You can’t take lunch until they do, you’re shackled to the desk all day so clients don’t have to go to voicemail (especially when the second assistant is out sick), and they ask you to report on gossip among the assistants. Who was at the happy hour last night? How much did they drink? They might be reading your email, but you shudder to think it, especially because you’re so busy drawing a color-coded diagram of their brand-new camera because they can’t be bothered to read the instructions.
Winning suggestion: Bill Murray in Scrooged, submitted by Mike. A close runner up was “My Boss,” submitted by basically everyone.
Don’t worry if you didn’t win this go-round. We’re still looking for the perfect media or TV example of The Martyr.
If you hate your job, odds are you’re looking for a new one. And if you’re looking for a new job you’re probably hitting up websites like Monster.com.
Well, if you ever posted your resume on Monster, beware, since the site was hacked. Monster CEO Sal Iannuzzi says that the hack was so severe that everyone should assume their personal info was stolen unless they find out otherwise.
Yikes. Looks like we’ll be going back to Hotjobs now, thanks.
Men’s magazine Stuff has Ivanka Trump on the cover this month. Normally, Stuff is pretty straightforward about putting hot girls on the cover just because they’re hot girls, but they claim that Ivanka is “the world’s hottest boss.”
Now, we normally hate it when rich kids get management jobs just because of who their mommies or daddies are (see Bossary category “The Boss’ Kid), but Ivanka actually impressed us when she was a judge on her dad’s show The Apprentice. She has a degree from the Wharton School of Business and was the only person who kept that show from devolving even further into a three-ring circus.
Maybe it’s because we’re both attracted to dudes, but we’re not 100 percent sold on Ivanka as the world’s hottest boss. Decide for yourselves.
During the time of The Lord of the Rings, I used to work for two women at a nonprofit. They were affectionately known to me as the Evil Twins. They were my supervisors and used to run around with make believe halos on their heads while they were busy at work setting up people to get fired.
I will never forget the time I saw a list on one of their desks that stated: “get so and so fired.” Once I dreamt of them with hooves, tails and claws, I resigned.
I literally ran out of the building prior to my exit interview because I was afraid of them! LOL
Every time I see one of the volunteers I send them “my very best regards.” OMG, I can’t believe I put up with them for over a year. My “office space” was a closet– the Xerox machine got ousted out and they stuck me in there. –Submitted by Ale
If there’s anything we hate, it’s talentless kids of famous people being famous by association. And if there’s anything we hate more than that, it’s talentless kids of famous people somehow being rewarded and making money for doing nothing.
Enter Brody Jenner.
This week’s In Touch magazine (no, it’s the badly-designed one next to Us Weekly…no, not Life and Style, the other one…) runs what essentially amounts to a press release about Brody working on a line of jewelry. Because what exactly does Brody Jenner know about jewelry, anyway? Did he look at a candy bracelet in a vending machine and think “oh, dude, I could totally make that.”
And in case you were wondering how business-savvy any friend of Spencer Pratt’s could be, wait no longer. Brody admits that he “needs someone to help him with his computer.” Hear that, everyone? Brody needs an assistant! Why aren’t you flying to L.A. right this second?
Hell hath no fury like an admin scorned. Take Virginia Grover for example. After dealing with years of system-wide abuse in her job as secretary to the Chief of Police in Kittery, Maine, she finally told off her boss in a resignation letter that then appeared in the local paper. Full text of the letter is below.
Continue reading ’secretary resigns, tells boss to fuck off’
Yesterday we asked you guys for help coming up with two examples of bosses in our bossary. Well, we’re now adding yet another boss to the list. So in addition to sending us TV/movie examples for The Micromanaging Jackass and the Past Their Prime, you can now send examples of The Martyr.
The Martyr: Nothing is ever her fault. Even when something bad happens to her as a direct result of something she did, she acts like she’s sacrificing herself to save other employees. Whether the company loses a huge client or the fax machine is broken again, she just sighs, puts her hand to her head, and starts humming the opening bars of “Nobody Knows the Troubles I’ve Seen.” She threatens to quit whenever she is “unjustly punished” or “cruelly reprimanded,” but everyone knows she’d rather mope around the office to get attention than leave and have people stop listening to her.
“Horror story as prose poem” is really the only good way we can describe this email that came across our desks this morning. It’s a shitty boss turned into lyric. Beautiful, really.
Just left my job after once again being told “close the door, we need to talk” about how I made one mistake on an excel spreadsheet that was 5 million pages, have I copied her on every email I sent out? The mtgs at 10 and its 9:59 – call these people and see if they are coming or not! All labels typed in the exact same font, exact same spacing on the label. Tear things out of my hand if I didnt move fast enough. Slams hands down on the desk if you ask just one too many questions – pity the poor new employee who had just one too many questions on training…he got the hands slammed down. Gossip about everyone in the place – and shes the HR manager! From clothes to cleavage, unbelieveable. I was to be the eyes and ears; whos talking to whom in the cafe – who came in late, who left early, who is out talking to the receptionist just a bit too long. I could go and on and on…but, I was the 4th in a row to leave, and she has only been in the job a little over a year! — Submitted by “G.W.”, Bolton, Mass
You may have noticed a little list of evil bosses we like to call The Bossary. The Bossary is how we explain people like The Drama Queen and The Overstresser. However, we’re missing one or two crucial things: examples. We need you, STA readers, to help us come up with examples of TV or movie bosses who exemplify the following types. Winners will get shoutouts on the site, and maybe red staplers, if we can find some. Start a-postin’ those comments now.
1. The PTP (Past Their Prime): Working for this person will open tons of doors for you in the industry- if you’re sixty-five. This boss used to be a hotshot, but now he has no real projects to work on and gets stuck in a corner office because everyone at the company is too scared to force him to retire. Instead of getting hands-on experience in your field, you get to bring him coffee six times a day while he lectures you about how this business just doesn’t have any integrity anymore.
2. The Micromanaging Jackass: This one is fairly self-explanatory. Did you put everything in alphabetical order? Well, you should have also color coded it. You can’t take lunch until they do, you’re shackled to the desk all day so clients don’t have to go to voicemail (especially when the second assistant is out sick), and they ask you to report on gossip among the assistants. Who was at the happy hour last night? How much did they drink? They might be reading your email, but you shudder to think it, especially because you’re so busy drawing a color-coded diagram of their brand-new camera because they can’t be bothered to read the instructions.
