Gawker reports that HBO has optioned Sloane Crosley’s essay collection I Was Told There’d Be Cake for a possible TV show. Although the personal essays cover a range of topics, from moving to dating to My Little Ponies, word on the street is that the essay the network is most interested in is “The Ursula Cookie.” If you haven’t read it, the funny/sad story details Crosley’s miserable experiences working as an assistant in New York City, including making a cookie shaped like her boss (that’d be Ursula)’s head, only to quit on 9/11.
Monthly Archive for June, 2008
You already know what ‘tone deaf’ means, but words have a tendency to take on new meanings when applied to the office. ‘Tone deaf’ is basically a way of saying ‘can’t read a room.’ You know the scenario: your boss is totally gung ho about some new project that’s going to save the company, even though it’s a huge money drain and everyone else sees it. Or maybe your boss thinks ‘everyone is obsessively checking their watches during my presentation’ somehow translates into ‘they all think I am a genius and were in awe of my great new ideas.’
Is your boss tone deaf? Or maybe just delusional? Let us know.
A few weeks ago, we reported on news that hockey player Sean Avery was working as an intern at Vogue magazine. However, his duties weren’t much like that of a typical intern: he got to present at the FiFi Awards and rumors swirled that he would appear on the cover of sibling publication Men’s Vogue.
Now, some real (but nameless) Vogue interns have told Radar magazine that Sean is in no way getting the standard intern treatment. Intern Ashley reports that, unlike Avery, interns don’t get a company email address, any pay (he’s getting minimum wage), meeting invitations, event invitations, or face time with executives.
Not too shocking. But this slideshow of Avery in “intern” mode is pretty hilarious–unintentionally, of course.
Back in the glorious days when I worked from home, I watched a lot of bad TV. And I once saw the Naked Cowboy on an episode of Cristina’s Court, which is this terrible judge show. The Naked Cowboy is this dude who stands in his underwear in Times Square and gets his picture taken with people, and he has a guitar and sings this song that he wrote about himself. On Cristina’s Court, the Naked Cowboy was “suing” his girlfriend because she didn’t like having a 24/7 webcam in their bedroom that streamed to his website, and he was all “she’s getting between me and my destiny and blah blah something Tony Robbins said” and she was like “he’s delusional enough to think that people want to watch him sleep,” and Judge Cristina (who is a total famewhore, by the way) sided with the Cowboy because he “charmed” her by singing his stupid song in the courtroom.
Wait, what was this about? Oh, right. So the Naked Cowboy, for some reason, has an assistant. The assistant’s name is Elvis. One of Elvis’ duties is helping the Cowboy with his ridiculously OCD eating plan/schedule. I won’t bore you with the details of said food plan, since it is infinitely less interesting than fake lawsuits on Cristina’s Court, but together we can ponder what the hell kind of horror stories Elvis might be able to share with us.
In a huge victory for two assistants in particular and a small victory for all assistants everywhere, Varsha Sabhnani of Long Island was sentenced to 11 years in prison. The wealthy woman and her husband, Mahender, were convicted of several charges, including “forced labor,” for treating two maids like slaves. Samirah and Enung, who are both Indonesian, were essentially trapped at the couple’s mansion. Among some of the atrocities they had to endure:
The victims testified that they were beaten with brooms and umbrellas, slashed with knives, and forced to climb stairs and take freezing showers as punishment. One victim was forced to eat dozens of chili peppers against her will, and then was forced to eat her own vomit when she couldn’t keep the peppers down, prosecutors said.
Prosecutors contended the accusations amounted to a “modern-day slavery” case. They said the maids were subjected to “punishment that escalated into a cruel form of torture,” which ended in May 2007, when one of the women fled early on the morning of Mother’s Day. She wandered into a Dunkin’ Donuts wearing nothing but rags, and employees called police.
Congratulations to Samirah and Enung, whose awful boss finally got her comeuppance. On behalf of all assistants I hope you move on to better opportunities and better treatment. Thank you for speaking out and calling attention to the employee abuses that still exist in our country.
You know that theory about how pregnancy is contagious? Like, when one chick in the office gets knocked up the next thing you know four others are all expecting. Well, Angelina Jolie’s longtime friend and assistant, Holly Goline (who was the victim of some identity theft recently), is also pregnant. This week’s Life and Style magazine reports that Goline’s [pictured, below, with her famous boss] due date is very close to Angelina’s. Maybe they can share a hospital suite?
There’s always a distance between a boss and the employees, its just nature’s rule. It’s intimidation mostly. It’s the awareness that they are not me.
Have you ever watched The Coreys, the reality show that follows ex-teen-stars Corey Haim and Corey Feldman as they try to rebuild their lives? The show, now in its second season, has taken a darker turn as both the Coreys have entered therapy to deal with painful memories from their lives. Corey Feldman, who has denied rumors that he was molested by Michael Jackson as a kid, finally admitted that he had been sexually abused by a man–by his then-assistant. Feldman told GQ, “The guy that did this to me was my assistant. I was still a virgin at the time. I hadn’t even had sex with a girl. So for me it was just kind of bewildering.”
[In case you didn't grow up in the 80s, Feldman is the one on the right.]
We’re sad and outraged to hear that, unlike we usually report, sometimes an assistant can be the one mistreating a boss. Good luck in therapy, Corey, and I promise to stop making Lost Boys jokes.
I don’t know where Obetz, Ohio is, but I may have to schedule a visit. Recently, a local bartender named Melody Pullen (who owns a “menagerie”) brought a bear cub with her to work at the bar she owns. The bear, whose name is Pooh, needed to be bottle-fed every three hours, which is why Pullen decided he needed to come to work with her. Not surprisingly, the customers loved the cutie, but her coworkers weren’t big fans. Although Pullen has the necessary bear-owning permits and the local police said she was within her rights, other people in the town are trying to harsh her buzz by passing a “no exotic animals at work” law.
I hope this doesn’t affect my chances to get a miniature pony at my office. I want it to carry packages around the office. Come on, how cute would that be? First they come for the bear cubs, then they come for the miniature ponies, and then they come for you.
