Published on
October 22, 2007 in
Holidays.
Because there can never be enough random “holidays”, apparently today is International Caps Lock Day.
Normally, we don’t approve of overusing capital letters. It’s sort of like how Mark Twain (it was him, right?) said that every person should be allowed to use two exclamation points in his or her entire life. Like exclamation points, capital letters are super annoying if used too often. They’re the internet equivalent of yelling. But hey, if you’re bored at work and need excuses to send all-caps emails to your friends, knock yourself out.
If you’ve never watched NBC’s 30 Rock, the Emmy-winning sitcom about the behind-the-scenes goings-on at an SNL-type show (God, that was a lot of hyphens), you should be. The hilarious show, written by the girlcrush worthy Tina Fey, has so many smart, quotable lines per show that we have to watch each episode a couple of times to catch them all. And many of the best lines come out of the mouth of assistant Kenneth, an NBC page who is the calm, naive counterpoint to all the eccentric personalities on the show.
Whether he’s being drafted into high-strung star Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan)’s entourage, being dared to try to kiss hottie receptionist Cerie (Katrina Bowden), getting sent on ridiculous errands by network exec Jack (Alec Baldwin) or being charged with the task of making leading actress Jenna (Jane Krakowski) eat, Kenneth’s good manners and wide-eyed innocence always crack us up. For going above and beyond the duties of even the most overworked celebrity assistant, Kenneth, we salute you.
We weren’t aware of this, but apparently Jessica Alba and Mike Myers are making a movie together, something called The Love Guru. (At least she’s upgrading–Myers’ worst movies are fifty times funnier than anything Dane Cook does.) While TMZ.com is mostly interested in the fact that a planned dance sequence in the film had to be scrapped because of Jessica’s two left feet, over at STA headquarters we were fixated on this paragraph:
Meanwhile, according to Gatecrasher, Myers has two male assistants who “follow him constantly,” one who holds an umbrella to shield his face, and another with a water bottle. Also, he has such a phobia of reflective surfaces, Myers is making people cover them up with black tape.
It’s not quite cleaning up Ricki Lake’s afterbirth or anything, but still…the umbrella-shlepping assistant is an archetype we would love to see go the way of the Mesozoic Era.
We wanted to hate this article, really we did, just from the title: What to Do When Your Assistant Sucks. We take assistantdom very seriously, and we always give a beleaguered underling the benefit of the doubt.
But here’s the thing: sometimes assistants suck. Also, sometimes a boss and an assistant can both be competent, reasonable people and just not click together. And the advice given here is both reasonable and competent. Example:
Okay, maybe she really does suck. Or maybe you suck. But passive-aggressive behavior won’t get you anywhere. I have been a legal secretary and before that an admin assistant for over 10 years. I’ve seen attorneys stomp their feet, roll their eyes, do their own work, foist their work on others and hide in their offices — all to avoid a crappy assistant. Why?!? Let me tell you, it doesn’t help office morale to know the girl down the row makes as much as you (or more) and gets away with doing absolutely nothing because her partners are too afraid to talk to her or to management.
Good point. Have you ever had a fellow assistant who totally wasn’t good at his or her job but just kept floating by because of who their boss was, while you had to pick up the slack? Bad employees hurt everyone.
For more advice from the other side of the aisle, click here.
Do you love NBC’s “The Office”? If you do, you might want to head to Scranton, PA (where the show is set) next weekend for an “Office” convention. You can meet actors from the show, get your picture taken near Scranton landmarks that have appeared in various episodes, and maybe meet other cute “Office”philes to trade Dwight-isms with.
For more info, click here.
Good news everybody: it is fucking great to swear at work! All those motherfucking shitheels you work with will get more work done that way, and be way more fucking happy about it.
The University of East Anglia (that’s in England, for those of you playing along at home) business professor Yehuda Baruch did research to ‘prove’ that swearing in the workplace promotes camaraderie. His findings:
swearing in front of senior staff or customers should be seriously discouraged or banned, but in other circumstances it helped foster solidarity among employees and express frustration, stress or other feelings.
“Employees use swearing on a continuous basis, but not necessarily in a negative, abusive manner,” said Baruch, who works in the university’s business school in Norwich.
Banning swear words and reprimanding staff might represent strong leadership, but could remove key links between staff and impact on morale and motivation, he said.
Fucking awesome, we think.
According to a new Gallup poll analyzed by WebMD, the majority of Americans are “morning people.” 55 percent of the people surveyed say they’re at their best between 5 AM and noon.
Our response:
Are you kidding? 55 percent? Maybe 55 percent of the people who bothered to answer the phone when you called them at 7 AM, but not 55 percent of the workforce we’ve ever met…the people who need a steady drip of Starbucks just to be able to speak in complete sentences. And it just so happens that the majority of people who said they got the most work done in the morning were people who made way more money than any of us. Well, yeah, there’s more incentive to get to work early when you’re actually being compensated for it.
I bet if we did our own version of this poll, and one of the choices was “whenever I’m not at work,” that would win. Just saying.
Lilit here. I try to keep my fourth-wall-breaking to a minimum, but I have to tell you about this crazy fucking dream I had last night.
I used to work at Company X, where I worked for an evil man who was half Functional Illiterate and half Past Their Prime. The girl I replaced was named Katie. After I left, I found out that Katie had gone back to work for the evil boss. She either has a major case of Stockholm Syndrome or is a candidate for sainthood.
So last night I dreamed that the former boss died. And that his funeral was being held at Company X, only it was a weird mix of Company X and my apartment. For some reason, I had showed up early to help Katie prepare everything, and we were the only two people in the office. Then, suddenly, we hear a voice–it’s our boss’ voice from beyond the grave. And he’s screaming at us, telling us we’re incompetent, and that we’re setting everything up wrong, and he can never rely on us to do anything.
Fucked up, isn’t it? Any of you with better dream-analysis abilities want to take a stab at what the heck this thing meant?
We can never get enough news about Britney Spears’ assembly line of assistants. Apparently after the dismal failures that were Shannon Funk and “Cousin” Alli, Brit has decide to get a similarly-monikered male assistant, Bret.
Us Weekly reports that Brit ‘n Bret were shopping at Neiman Marcus in Los Angeles earlier this week. She was apparently overheard trashing the judge in her recent child custody hearing, but there’s also compelling evidence that Brit is one or two degrees away from being a Naomi Campbell-level assistant abuser:
First the pop star commandeered a dressing room (generally reserved for the disabled) to try on a slew of Juicy Couture dresses.
Then, after belting out Rihanna’s “Umbrella,” Spears told her assistant Bret she wanted her dog London. Learning the Yorkie was in Malibu, 27 miles away, she said, “F-k that. That will take us an hour to drive there. Can’t we have the dog messengered over?”
Um, yeah. That’s all we have to say about that.
Going out for drinks with other assistants is a great way to network, blow off steam, and meet other people in your field. But as the blogger and film PA Becky points out, there’s an art to assistant drinks.
The Twelve Rules of Assistant Drinks
1) There are only a certain number of times that you can cancel or reschedule drinks. After three, it tends to look bad. Don’t be a tool.
2) Do your homework. Know who you are meeting, where they are currently working, and what films they’ve done, and what they’ve got in development.
3) If you do not have a CrackBerry like myself, for the love of God, remember to exchange cell phone numbers before leaving the office. If someone has to ditch on you or their car breaks down or whatnot, you’ll be screwed waiting at the bar or restaurant with no way to get a hold of them.
For the rest of the list, click here.
