a blog for the beleaguered
Ashley here. Lilit’s off in Buenos Aires for a couple of weeks so I’ll be picking up the slack until her return. We’ll also be featuring some awesome guest-bloggers, which we’re very excited about.
I’m going to try to avoid Britney-related posts because, really, aren’t we all just sick of the trainwreck at this point? However, if Naomi Campbell starts acting up again, I’ll be all over that. I’m still pissed that she never had to wear that orange sanitation suit.
Yep, the president’s support staff consists of 1,800 people in the Executive Office of the President. It wasn’t created until 1939, but we doubt that means the president was typing up his own memos until then. Congress created the support staff under Franklin D. Roosevelt, presumably to help him roll out The New Deal, and it’s since grown to include everything from regular assistants to staff that are essentially obligated to take a bullet for their boss. You better hope your nightmare boss doesn’t get a hold of that job description.
From the Daily Mirror (UK):
Which American actress is so incredibly stupid, she has to have two faffing assistants around her at all times – to remind her where she is and who she’s talking to?
Post guesses in the comments.
While we acknowledge that lots of bosses suck, and that if they didn’t this website would be pointless, we occasionally have to concede that some assistants suck too. Here are some types we’ve noticed:
The Brat: This assistant may have gone to a prestigious college or is from a really privileged background. Regardless, he struts in the first day expecting to immediately get assigned projects, and then has a near-breakdown when someone asks him to make coffee.
Debbie Downer: Maybe this assistant had a negative personality to begin with, or maybe she’s been so beaten down by her job that she’s having a permanent bad day. No matter what you do, this assistant will suck the life out of anyone around her. If you say “I just got a raise!” she’ll find a way to make you feel like shit, perhaps pointing out that someone else got a higher raise, or that the one you got still won’t catch you up to the standard of living.
The Imaginary Mogul: Even though he’s an assistant, this guy uses generous helpings of the company stationery and tells people at networking events that he has way more power than he does. It could be delusion, or it could be that he’s read too many of those books that tell people to “dress for the job they want, not the job they have,” but at the end of the day he just looks like a jerk.
The Backstabber: This assistant has big dreams. She may be a peon now, but she has watched The Devil Wears Prada at least fifty times and has absolutely no objection to stabbing every other assistant in the back if it means she’s the one who gets the coveted promotion. And, truth is, she’d do it even if there was nothing at stake.
The Joiner: This assistant somehow finds times to be part of an intramural soccer team, on the steering committe for a couple of charitable organizations, and a member of an award-winning dance troupe. That’s fine, except that he feels the need to invite you to everything. You can’t go through a day without multiple CC-the-whole-office emails about the latest charity event he’s hosting, and without also being made to feel guilty for not paying $200 for a seat at the table.
Mary Sunshine: The polar opposite of Debbie Downer. Usually, she’s the newest person at the company and hasn’t been broken down yet. But it’s also likely that she has some kind of external thing shielding her from the horrors of assistant life–maybe she’s independently wealthy and thus doesn’t have to stress about stretching her paycheck. Regardless, if you want to vent about something, this is the woman who will tell you to “keep a happy face on” while she refreshes her kitten-with-umbrella screensaver.
Tell us who we missed!
…or as we like to call it, Happy Day After Valentine’s 50 Percent Off All Candy Day!
This is the time to raid the local drugstore, then stash all the goodies in your office. Pretend it’s almost winter and you’re a bear preparing for hibernation.
You may not remember who David Coverdale is, but he’s the lead singer of Whitesnake and the ex-husband of Tawny Kitaen. Their great artistic collaboration was a little music video called “Here I Go Again On My Own,” which featured Tawny crawling around on the hood of a car. Anyway, since their divorce they’ve both mostly fallen off the pop culture radar, but David is still making records, and still has an assistant. It just goes to show that no matter how obscure you may be now, if you were famous at one point you’re still going to claim you’re physically unable to make your own hotel reservations. Does Bret Michaels have an assistant? And if so, is he or she too smart to show their face on Rock of Love?
Anyway, this only tangentially has to do with assistants, so we’re going to shut up and just show that Whitesnake video now.
Have you seen the craptastic new show Millionaire Matchmaker? Basically, this chick gets paid a bunch of money to find rich old dudes trophy wives.
USA Today makes the excellent point that men on the show claim to want ambitious women whose interests match their own, yet usually end up asking for second and third dates with women with much lower-paying jobs. Among some of the jobs that USA Today lists as “unthreatening” professions? You got it–being an assistant.
Are assistants by nature unthreatening? A lot of our job requires us to work behind the scenes, so to the casual observer it can seem we’re not really doing anything. And if we’re a PA, we often devote more time to running someone else’s life than running our own, but does that make us unthreatening or just good prioritizers? And shouldn’t the writer have said “non-threatening” instead of “unthreatening”?
Let us know what you think.
Comedienne and outfit-critiquer Joan Rivers is now producing and starring in a somewhat-autobiographical play in L.A. The show, Life in Progress, is a meta look at Joan’s everyday life and features an actor playing her assistant.
The spectacle of Joan Rivers playing Joan Rivers watching a character portraying Joan Rivers’ assistant doing a Joan Rivers impression (and that’s not even the punch line) is part of a brief comic bit in the new play, a mash-up of Hollywood insider memoir, backstage romp and dramatic leap into some of the rawest, most emotional periods of the 74-year-old’s life.
In the most telling bit about the assistant’s role in this play, the Los Angeles Times review fails to mention the assistant character’s name, gender, and the name of the actor who plays him or her. That shouldn’t come as a surprise, really.
ABC.com has some super cute e-Valentines with characters from their shows Lost, Grey’s Anatomy, and Ugly Betty on them. They’re adorable and don’t need stamps. Check out a great workplace-themed one STA reader Sherry sent us here.
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