A 13-year-old girl in Missouri named Megan Meier committed suicide in 2006 after a boy she’d been flirting with on MySpace rejected her and hurled insults at her online. It turned out that this boy was actually a hoax, the creation of Lori Drew, whose daughter Sarah used to be Megan’s best friend. Lori, Sarah, and Lori’s assistant Ashley Grills (who was 18 at the time), created the fake MySpace account together. According to Wired, who has done a great job covering the case (notable for being the first-ever federal charge of ‘cyberbullying’):
Prosecutors alleged that Drew and the two others used the profile to lure Megan into an online relationship with “Josh” to find out what Megan was saying about Drew’s daughter online. Midway through the ruse, prosecutors said Drew changed the plan and wanted to print out the correspondence between Megan and the fake boy in order to confront her with the pages in public and humiliate her.
That confrontation never occurred. But after “Josh” turned on Megan and told her he wanted to sever their relationship, Megan hanged herself in her bedroom in October 2006.
Lori Drew was charged after Ashley Grills (pictured) was given immunity in exchange for testifying against her former boss.
Some bosses treat interns like crap–yelling at them, throwing stuff, or firing them in front of the whole company. But William F. Smithson went one step further than that.
Smithson worked for a company that manufactures sports scoreboards. An intern named Jason Kyle Shephard, who was working in the South Dakota office, was sent by the company on a business trip to Philadelphia. According to Philly.com:
Later that night, Shephard sat talking about girls and drinking Gatorade in the Delaware County home of a coworker. The 23-year-old had no way of knowing his drink had been spiked with the date-rape drug GHB, that there was a sex den in the basement, and that a third man was in the home.
Shephard never lived to see the Philadelphia sites.
It’s pretty much common knowledge that being an assistant for a celebrity who has kids means you’re the kids’ nanny by default. Here’s one recent example where the assistant/default nanny came to a head: Reese Witherspoon was on Letterman last night talking about a recent trip she, her kids, and Jake Gyllenhaal took to Paris. Reese (who seems like a much more hands-on mom than, say, J.Lo) happily took daughter Ava to famed Paris sites like the Eiffel Tower. However, when her son Deacon expressed interest in seeing Paris’ sewers, Reese suddenly “had to work.” And who took Deacon to the sewer? Why, Reese’s assistant, of course. Jezebel has a full clip from Letterman.
Thanks to my friend Josie Jobless, I recently got reacquainted with a TV assistant character of yore: Bubble, the flaky, emptyheaded assistant to badly dressed lush/PR exec Edina Monsoon on the brilliant British sitcom Absolutely Fabulous. While Bubble wasn’t one for office work (she once accidentally emailed Edina’s entire address book and all her recent correspondence to a business rival), she wore crazy outfits and was a great comic foil. Here’s Bubble, as she tries to become a better assistant by figuring out how the New Year works and thus dating checks accordingly.
Britney Spears is looking happier and healthier on the cover of this week’s Rolling Stone, and she opens up to the magazine about the way her life is now. Her dad, Jamie Spears, is Britney’s court-appointed conservator, and he’s been keeping Britney under control–giving her a curfew, making her stay away from loser ex-boyfriend Adnan Ghalib, and getting her to give up drinking and partying. Britney recounted this story of a date she went on recently:
Recently, Spears was accompanied [on a date] by her assistant, Brett, and [manager Larry] Rudolph’s colleague, Adam Leber. “Right when we got there, we just knew it was just bad,” Spears says. “He looked like an older version of Harry Potter, but skinnier. … So I had to get dessert first. And the other date I had, the guy was really, really tall and a lot older. … We’re trying to ask him questions, like, ‘OK, you’re into martial arts, so what kind of martial arts are you into?’ And he was like, ‘Oh, all kinds.’ … But you know how silly we are, so we were just cracking up.”
Wait a sec…does this mean Britney has rehired her former assistant Brett? The one who was reportedly working for her back in the fall of 2007 (and whose name was spelled Bret)? Or is this someone totally different? Thank goodness she’s not gallivanting around town with Alli Sims again.
99 percent of the time I think having sex with a coworker is the worst idea ever. It’s sort of like why I wouldn’t recommend dating anyone who lives on the same floor as you in your college dorm. However, the “Modern Love” column in this weekend’s New York Times provides one of the rare instances when it’s probably OK: when you’re both about to accept buyouts and lose your jobs. After all, when you’re very close to not being coworkers anymore, that almost falls into normal one night stand territory, right?
Mary Pols writes about her own experience with “buyout sex,” when she and an attractive coworker went out for drinks to mourn the upcoming loss of their newspaper reporter jobs and wound up having sex. Sure, it was kind of weird and uncomfortable after that–but hey, everybody was packing up their desks anyway.
Anna Wintour, the patron saint of bad celebrity bosses, may be stepping down from her post as Editor in Chief of fashion bible Vogue. The known assistant and intern torturer won’t comment on whether she’s departing from her cushy gig. However, Gawker has some evidence as to why ‘Nuclear’ Wintour might be on the way out:
Men’s Vogue recently got downgraded from 12 issues a year to 2. Apparently, Wintour didn’t even try to stick up for the magazine.
Main rival Elle is one of the only magazines, fashion or otherwise, that’s on the upswing in terms of revenue, ad pages, and a successful TV partnership (first Project Runway and now Stylista).
Her contract is up
Although she seems nonplussed by all the bad press she’s gotten, it’s possible that being widely hated has finally gotten to be too much for her.
One other noteworthy item: Wintour’s daughter, Bee Shaffer, is about to graduate from Columbia and enter the job force. What better way to retire than to groom your perfect replacement?
Two celebrity- assistant- related court cases are going on now.
First up, we have STA favorite Grace Rwaramba, the former assistant to Michael Jackson. Jackson was being sued by a Bahraini sheik who claimed that Jackson owed him $7 million. $1 million of the sum (Jackson says it was a gift, the sheik says it was a loan) was allegedly deposited directly into Rwaramba’s account. Rwaramba testified about the money, but it was for naught since Jackson decided over the weekend to settle the lawsuit out of court.
Second, we have a newly-filed lawsuit by Travis Barker. Barker, who survived the South Carolina plane crash that killed his assistant Chris Baker and bodyguard Charles Still, is suing the company that made the Learjet they were in. According to E!,
Barker’s camp believes that “one or more of the tires failed, leaving tire debris and portions of airplane components along the 8,600 foot runway” and the pilot made a “negligent attempt to abort the takeoff.”
Thelma Still, Charles’ mother, is joining Barker as a plaintiff. For the time being, Baker’s widow and other family members are not part of the lawsuit.
Have you ever noticed that spam email tends to follow certain patterns? For a couple of weeks or months, everything in your junk folder has a celebrity’s name in the title or looks like a fake Us Weekly headline. Then for a couple of weeks or months it switches to being fake lottery winnings. For the last two or three weeks, all of my spam email has been about employment. It’s totally possible that the evil trolls who live in the internet and spy on us know that I write a blog about workplace and employment issues and are just using topics I might be interested in as a way to infect me with their viruses. But, more likely, the people who create spam emails pay attention to what’s going on in the world and create their subject lines to appeal to what people need or want. And right now, with the economy in a seeming freefall and people stressing about money, what better way to convince them to click on your junk mail (which is actually porn, or a virus, or an illegal pharmacy in Mexico) than to tell them you’re going to help them find a job? Here are some selected titles of spam emails I’ve gotten in the last few days:
Congratulations we’ve found you a job!
FELICITATIONS VOUS AVEZ GAGNEZ! TRAVAILLEZ POUR NOUS! (For the non-French speakers: “Congratulations, you’ve won! Work for us!”)
Click here for hundreds of jobs in your area
Work from home and make millions
Fill out surveys in your spare time
Looking for a job? Click here
WE WANT TO HIRE YOU!
…you get the idea.
Anyone else been getting an unusually high percentage of job-related spam?
A 13-year-old girl in Missouri named Megan Meier committed suicide in 2006 after a boy she’d been flirting with on MySpace rejected her and hurled insults at her online. It turned out that this boy was actually a hoax, the creation of Lori Drew, whose daughter Sarah used to be Megan’s best friend. Lori, Sarah, and Lori’s assistant Ashley Grills (who was 18 at the time), created the fake MySpace account together. According to Wired, who has done a great job covering the case (notable for being the first-ever federal charge of ‘cyberbullying’):
Some bosses 
It’s pretty much common knowledge that being an assistant for a celebrity who has kids means you’re the kids’ nanny by default. Here’s one recent example where the assistant/default nanny came to a head: Reese Witherspoon was on Letterman last night talking about a recent trip she, her kids, and 
Britney Spears is looking happier and healthier on the cover of this week’s Rolling Stone, and 
99 percent of the time I think 
Anna Wintour, the patron saint of bad celebrity bosses, may be stepping down from her post as Editor in Chief of fashion bible Vogue. The known 
Two celebrity- assistant- related court cases are going on now.
Have you ever noticed that spam email tends to follow certain patterns? For a couple of weeks or months, everything in your junk folder has a celebrity’s name in the title or looks like a fake Us Weekly headline. Then for a couple of weeks or months it switches to being fake lottery winnings. For the last two or three weeks, all of my spam email has been about employment. It’s totally possible that the evil trolls who live in the internet and spy on us know that I write a blog about workplace and employment issues and are just using topics I might be interested in as a way to infect me with their viruses. But, more likely, the people who create spam emails pay attention to what’s going on in the world and create their subject lines to appeal to what people need or want. And right now, with the economy in a seeming freefall and people stressing about money, what better way to convince them to click on your junk mail (which is actually porn, or a virus, or an illegal pharmacy in Mexico) than to tell them you’re going to help them find a job? Here are some selected titles of spam emails I’ve gotten in the last few days: