It being Talk Like a Pirate Day and all, we thought, “hmm… well, this could be an annoying way to even the score with your boss.” To that end, we’ve compiled this brief list of scenarios you might encounter today and how to handle them – like a pirate.
Scenario #1:
Boss: Why are you late?
You: Me ship hit a nasty keel on the way to port las’ night an’ I din’t get to rest me head until the wee hours.
Scenario #2:
Boss: Fetch me some coffee.
You: Arr, me stumpy leg is killin’ me from walkin’ all over the office fer ye. I believe I shall commit mutiny!
Scenario #3:
Boss: (Phone rings) If that’s my wife/kid/whoever on the line, I’m not here.
You: (Answering phone) Arr, sorry to tell ye but yer ol’ man would rather walk a plank than talk to ye.
Scenario #4:
Boss: Here’s your paycheck.
You: Such a small amount of booty fer such back-breakin’ work, ye tight-fisted scalawag!
Scenario #5:
Boss: I’ve had enough of this pirate crap. You’re fired.
You: Shivver me timbers! Now I can collect me some o’ that thar unemployment. Arr!
(Alternatively, if you’re shy or not into the pirate thing, you can just tell everyone to “shove off”.)
One of our favorite hobbies is turning nouns into verbs. For example, in college one of Lilit’s friends used to say his goal in life was “to do drugs and Kerouac around.”
So here’s today’s object-into-action: helicopter. When you visualize a helicopter, you see it coming close to the ground, blades whirring rapidly, and sending everything around it into a wind-swept furor. Now, imagine that in boss form. To helicopter means ‘to land in a room and start sending everything into a commotion.’ You know how you and a bunch of other assistants will be working on something when all of a sudden a supervisor shows up, starts rambling about something, and the next thing you know there are piles of papers everywhere and there’s a huge (literal and/or figurative) mess to clean up?
Here’s an example of how to use it in a sentence: “I thought I was on top of everything at work today, but then the HR manager came in and helicoptered all over the place.”
Tomorrow, September 19, is National Talk Like a Pirate Day. Here are a few suggestions for spicing up your workday:
First, we hope your boss’ name has a fun letter R in it that you can roll. (Good morning, CaRRRRRL!) If not, you can find out his or her pirate name with one of these handy name generators.
Second, encourage other employees to come in tomorrow in pirate gear. It’s harder to stare at your computer when you have on an eyepatch! Greet them with a chipper “Ahoy Matey!”
Third, waste tons of time with online piratey resources, like this What Kind of Swashbuckler Are You? quiz.
While we here at STA Headquarters don’t normally care about all the fake holidays and weeks that get handed out all over the place (except for Talk Like a Pirate Day! Arrrrr!), here’s one worthy of celebrating: No Stress Day. On Saturday, September 29, you’re supposed to devote the day to pampering yourself. Their website lists spas, yoga studios, surf schools, and other stress-relieving places across the country that are offering discounts, so check if there’s a good deal for you.
While No Stress Day is a great idea, we have to take offense with one thing in particular: it’s on a Saturday. Because Saturday isn’t already a day devoted to vegging out? If whoever the heck is behind this site/day/marketing idea really wanted to help people out, they’d suggest a nice Wednesday or Thursday and try to encourage bosses to give employees the day off, or at least take a long lunch break to go get that discounted facial. So, until then, feel free to take advantage of a 20 percent off shiatsu massage, but don’t buy one of their T-shirts.
We’re not sure if we find the question ‘is your boss an asshole?’ to be insulting. After all, the answer for people on this site, 99 times out of 100, is ‘yes.’ And we don’t need any kind of scientific formula to explain why–we have stories about coked-up bosses sending incomprehensible BlackBerry emails as evidence.
But if, hypothetically, you weren’t sure if your boss was an asshole, you could take a look at this checklist and find out. We prefer to use the points on this list for validation purposes. For example:
- Requires “handlers.”
- Relates to people primarily in terms of what they can do for him
- Calls employees at home or on the weekends
- Believes that the world is out to get her when faced with criticism or even omission
Compared to what we’ve seen on this website, this checklist will be met by most of you with a “ha!” Still, take a look and see if there’s anything missing.
Congrats to America Ferrera, whose portrayal of “Ugly Betty” inspires all beleaguered assistants, on her Emmy win last night. Instead of posting a picture of her in that pretty blue dress, we thought we’d post ‘an action shot’ of her in full out Betty gear.
From the people who brought us eBossWatch.com comes a new site, http://www.jerkfreejobs.com/. The sites complement each other: eBossWatch provides a listing of sucky bosses so you know to stay away from them, while Jerk Free Jobs recommends bosses who don’t suck. In order to get listed on JFJ, the boss in question has to get several high recommendations on eBossWatch. That way, it makes it harder for a certain employer to stuff the ballot box in his or her favor.
We like to inject the occasional shot of positivity into the workplace, so check out Jerk Free Jobs the next time you’re deciding to quit.
I work at a law firm. One of the partners has a rep for screaming at his paralegal from across the office (and it’s a big office). I can handle the yelling, but he does this other thing that just makes me nuts. He yells shit like “I NEED 20 COPIES OF THIS DOCUMENT WHEN THE CLIENT GETS HERE,” and then when we all make pitying faces at his paralegal he tacks on, ‘…PLEASE.’ in his same yelly voice. Always the same thing, beginning with I NEED and ending with …PLEASE. Today he even yelled his lunch order to her, “I NEED A TUNA MELT WITH EXTRA CHEESE NOW……..PLEASE.” Our theory is that someone tipped him off once to the fact that he sounded like an ass and now he adds “please” at the end of whatever he says to make it sound like he’s polite. Whatever. It still doesn’t make him less of an ass. –Submitted by Julia, New York City
Published on
September 13, 2007 in
Saved.
Meet Jane. She’s an STA reader who just saved herself from a shitty assistant job. However, she’s still coping with the lingering effects of Stockholm Syndrome. Below, she shares her story.
I have just, in the last hour, received a dream job offer and given notice at my assistant job. I should be breaking open the Veuve Cliquot. Instead, I feel like disloyal scum. I worked for a large higher education institution, let’s call it Anonyversity. I’d taken a temp position there a year ago when I’d finished up graduate school, followed by a month-long stint at an arts festival and needed to make some money quickly while I looked for a job in my field. I have an Arts PhD (insert ‘Doctor of Fuck All’ joke here), something I’d hoped to put to use as a lecturer and researcher. But, the job market is filled with arts PhDs, and though I’d had many interviews I’d not yet secured a teaching position. Since I’d always done office work, temping made sense at the time.
Continue reading ‘meet jane, an assistant saved’
You’ve heard of citizen’s arrest, the concept where a citizen who catches a crime can ‘arrest’ the person and hold them until the police arrive.
Well, we want to introduce the workplace equivalent of the term, the worker’s firing.
Is there a person at your company who is completely, totally useless, but protected by his or her boss for a reason no one understands? We say you should band together with your coworkers and fire the person as a company. Or at least hold onto him or her until a real executive with firing powers shows up. When the HR person arrives to see what the hell is going on, you can speak for the workers and say “So-and-so is a waste of space! He singlehandedly destroyed a huge project we were working on and we all had to pull an all-nighter to fix it! And he smells gross! And the client hates him! And did we mention he smells?”
“You are fired. You have the right to remain unemployed. Anything you do or say in your defense will be used to mock you later or fire you again, if we have to.”
Power to the people! Join the revolution, everybody.
