Halloween is a time for celebrating horror, right? Here are some ideas to help you celebrate the horror that is your assistant job…
1. Dress up like your favorite celebrity assistant. Some ideas to get you started:
- Naomi Campbell’s assistant: Tape a cell phone to your head to mark the spot that she threw it at you. Top it off with a nice footprint on your backside.
- Britney Spears’ assistant: Just look haggard and have your resignation letter in your back pocket.
- Diddy’s assistant: Look fly and perhaps carry around an ambiguously masculine parasol. Or even a cheesecake.
2. Play a practical joke on your boss. For example, put a mousetrap (or real mouse) in their desk drawer or hang a noose in their doorway. Too macabre? Replace their Xanax with Skittles. Or Exlax (you know you want to).
3. Suggest dressing up in a tandem costume with your boss. You can be Anne Hathaway and she can be Meryl Streep. Unless your boss is a “he”, in which case you should go the “Wall Street” route.
4. Eat too much candy and call in sick. You could call this a “dental health day” as opposed to a “mental health day“. (Har, har… ahem.)
5. Turn off all the lights, get a bag of microwave popcorn and read our horror stories.
Happy Halloween!
No one ever said being a personal assistant was easy. But one company is claiming they can handle all the pesky details of life. “Sandy” is a virtual personal assistant who can create to-do lists send you reminders about stuff you need to do. Hmm, we’ve heard of something like that…it’s called Yahoo! calendar reminders.
The problem with Sandy, except for the fact that she’s “in beta,” is that she’s a caricature. We don’t just mean that she’s an illustration, we mean that she’s an outdated cutesy drawing of a stereotypical Girl Friday. She’s drawn like a ’50s comic book babe, except that she has brown hair instead of blonde to indicate that she’s “smart.” To see more about the program (which is actually called I Want Sandy), click here.
Miss Ugly Betty herself, America Ferrera, had this to say in Star magazine (UK edition) when asked if her character was an exaggeration of an assistant:
“If you work in this industry, some of our plot lines aren’t as far-fetched as they seem. A lot of people in the film and television industry treat their assistants even worse than in this show.”
Um, word.
Check out this great article about people who fantasize about quitting and telling their bosses to fuck off. It’s in Canada’s Globe and Mail by Patrick White and features a quote from our very own Lilit. You can read it here, or just pick it up on a newsstand, if you’re one of our Canadian readers.
A recent article from the AP starts out with, “The calculus of living paycheck to paycheck in America is getting harder.”
My first reaction to this was, “I think my paycheck needs to be a lot more complicated (read: lucrative) for there to be calculus involved.” But that’s beside the point. The reality is that across the country (yes, across the country!) people are trying to cope with higher costs of living while their paychecks remain stagnant.
Imagine making $28K a year and trying to live in New York. Actually, most readers to this site don’t even have to imagine that. After taxes and health benefits (if you’re lucky enough to have those), you’re taking home about $1400 a month. Rent can be anywhere from $700 to $1000 a month, leaving you with about $400-$700 a month for everything else that you need to live. Totally ridiculous. How do people get by?
To answer this question, we’re resurrecting an old favorite, Save Some Dough - a place for financially beleaguered assistants to share their tricks for making ends meet (aside from relying heavily on the plastic).
Lilit again. I’m still in the UK and wanted to tell you about a gem of a television show that must IMMEDIATELY be aired in the States. The show is called Pete Burns’ PA. Pete Burns, since you haven’t heard of him, was the lead singer of now-defunct one hit wonder band Dead or Alive. [Their hit was "You Spin Me Round (Like a Record)," which I have had stuck in my head for the last three days now.] The show features Burns, who has had so much plastic surgery that he looks like a cross between Jenna Jameson and soap star Hunter Tylo, searching for a new personal assistant. It’s trashy, it’s embarrassing to watch, and has a great variety of British accents. My local friends tell me that this show is the followup to last year’s Jade Goody’s PA, where the UK reality-whore and alleged racist sought an assistant.
Considering how many reality shows we import/revamp from the UK (Big Brother, Survivor, etc), why has this TV masterpiece not made it across the pond? Assistants everywhere need to see this show so that they can decide their boss is not so bad after all.
Lilit here…I’m in London this week, which explains the lack of Britney Spears-related posts on this site. However, I had to tell you about a very cool find for assistants in the Big Smoke. The website The Other Lunch Break has fun, creative, and usually free things that you can do during your hour away from the office, many of which they host or sponsor themselves. Past offerings have included free lie detector tests, moonwalking lessons, and taking a class on how to impress your significant other’s parents.
They have got to move this to the other side of the pond. If you’re reading this, guys, I hereby offer to be the first student in your moonwalking class.
We love The Soup on E!, and the main reason we love it is the pure charm of host Joel McHale, who cuts a swath of snark through the worst of TV. We’re also loving the promos for the show, which feature Joel interviewing two potential candidates for his personal assistant. The two girls, blonde Stephanie and brunette Sarah, jump through various hoops to try and land the gig working with Joel, and he does his best to drive them crazy. [Inexplicably hilarious side moment: a caption notifies us that Sarah could have an edge because her favorite food is soup.]
Among other good bits from the commercial: Joel telling one of the girls that the contract lasts 35 years, Joel asking one of the girls if she does acid, and Joel (sigh) telling a girl he detected something unusual in her urine… because he tasted it.
We’ve been trying to find a video link to this promo…if you have a link and want to send it our way, we’d be very grateful.
Remember in school how you used to get a “stomach ache” or some other vague malady when you just didn’t feel like going? You could sit around in your pajamas and watch bad daytime TV, eat crappy food, nap all you wanted… ah, to be young and not an adult with a job.
The good news is that even if you’re an adult with a job, you can still play hooky. The difference is that now instead of a “stomach ache” you can take something much more adulty - a mental health day. We recommend using them when you’re at peak stress levels, when your boss is being particularly horrid, when it’s sunny or raining, or even when you just want to say, “feh - screw this job” for a day. And if you take them on a Monday or a Friday, voila! Mini-holiday.
This is one of the ickiest, saddest stats we’ve heard lately: according to LiveScience.com, 64 percent of Americans report they spend more time with their computer than with their significant other. While it’s understandable that you might spend 8 hours a day at work on your computer, thus upping your numbers, but… it’s depressing. It’s extra depressing if they count hand-held/portable devices like BlackBerries and PalmPilots. Sign of Stockholm Syndrome: if you are with your significant other, PARTICULARLY if you’re in the middle of getting some action, and you check your email, it is time to get a new job. Unless you’re avoiding your significant other, in which case they probably shouldn’t be your other any more.
For more info from the study, click here.