Most of us hate performance reviews the way that we hated parent/teacher conferences when we were kids: who really likes to be evaluated, especially when the evaluator is someone you might not even like? However, Alexander Kjerulf over at the Happy at Work blog has some actual practical reasons why we should do away with the performance review, namely that a) they’re a waste of time, and b) everyone – employees and managers alike – hates them. In addition, they’re also too formal and stilted (making it difficult to probe further into issues), rely too heavily on quantifying stuff that can’t be quantified, and they often become the only boss/employee interaction, meaning that problems can go on way too long before they get corrected.
It is normal – and expected – for famous people to delegate tasks to their assistant. After all, if you’re on the set of your movie for 12 hours a day, why not send your assistant to grocery shop for you? However, I feel like there are some people who delegate so much to their assistant(s) that there’s nothing left for them to do except drink, do drugs, court the paparazzi for “unplanned” photo ops, and have inappropriate relationships with people.
Case in point? Madonna. The star has multiple assistants as well as a huge household staff. However, I guess she finds the time to work out six hours a day because her staff does absolutely everything for her. Today’s Daily Mail reports that Madonna was furious when her employee Angela – nanny to Madonna’s youngest son, David Banda – put in her notice and instead fired her immediately. While I don’t write about celebrities’ nannies, Angela is an employee and was probably treated like dirt. However, one sentence in particular from the article stuck out to me:
According to her aides, a personal assistant will be sent [to Malawi, the African nation David was adopted from] next month to select a baby and ensure the official documentation is in place.
Sending an assistant to pick which kid you’d like to adopt next? I mean, don’t you want a little more say in who joins your frickin’ family? Well, maybe if the assistant is going to be the one raising the kid it makes sense that he or she should get to select their charge.
I was working at a nonprofit in DC for a summer before grad school, and there was this one coworker I totally hated. He was a spoiled rich boy and the son of a governor. Everyone in the office got signed to a minimum 2 year contract but spoiled rich boy (SRB) was starting law school later that year, so he got a special nine month contract, which was bullshit. But we all knew they were just using him for his insider DC connections anyway.
SRB’s lameness didn’t end with his special contract. He was constantly on the phone – wasting taxpayers’ time and money by not doing his job – with his Ivy law school, claiming he needed more financial aid and invoking his dad’s name to try and squeeze more money out. (To their credit, they didn’t budge.) To top it off, he quit at the six month mark so he was bored working and could spend the summer in Europe. Obviously, I hated him.
Patrick Kinna, 95, who spent years – including the duration of World War II – as Winston Churchill’s personal assistant, has died in Brighton, England. Kinna was chosen for the position because of his intelligence, skill, and discretion. This is my favorite part from his obituary:
Churchill often used to dictate letters and memos to Mr Kinna from his bath and one of his favourite stories came from an incident at the White House at Christmas 1941.
Kinna was summoned to take notes while the Prime Minister was soaking in the bath and on occasion Churchill would get out and pace about as he spoke with nothing on.
At one stage there was a knock on the door and when Churchill opened it, Roosevelt was there in his wheelchair.
The mortified president tried to leave but Churchill said: “Oh, no, no, no Mr. President. As you can see, I have nothing to hide from you.”
Rest in peace, Mr. Kinna. You were an honor to your profession.
For those of you who may not have heard of British reality star Jade Goody, who died today of cervical cancer, I will try to give a brief summary. Goody grew up in a poor, troubled household in London. She briefly worked as a dental assistant before being cast on the hugely popular reality show Big Brother. She became a breakout star – loved by some for being a ‘regular person’ and ‘working class heroine,’ despised by some for being uneducated, overweight, and a negative stereotype. Love or hate her, the British tabloids chose her as a regular subject, covering every aspect of her life, from her relationship with TV host Jeff Brazier (which resulted in two young sons) to her continued adventures in reality shows, which included an-Apprentice like series where she looked for a personal assistant. She did another stint on Big Brother and made international headlines for her awful treatment of housemate Shilpa Shetty, a Bollywood actress. To make amends, Jade appeared on India’s version of Big Brother, where she learned – on camera – that she had advanced cervical cancer. Since then, she sold the rights to everything from pictures of her in the hospital to updates on her treatment, saying that she had to do what she could to earn money for her sons while she was alive.
Although Jade was always a controversial figure during her short life (she was 27 when she died), she definitely will remain a British pop culture icon. My aunt died of a similar cancer, and I know that Jade was in extreme pain toward the end of her life. Her choice to live and die on camera may not have been a choice I would have made, but I admire the way she was able to use pop culture to turn her life around. My thoughts today are with the family and friends of this former assistant.
That said, this story is totally icky – apparently, when Julia Roberts was playing Tinker Bell in the movie Hook (which also starred a young Gwyneth Paltrow as Wendy) back before the internet existed and it was easy to call celebrities out on shit like this, she had an assistant for her feet. Yes, her feet. Specifically, this assistant’s job was to make sure the bottoms of Roberts’ feet were clean at all times while she dangled in the air for her role.
Oh, celebrities and their demands on assistants. Will wonders never cease?
JetBlue is by far my favorite domestic airline – they have direcTV, don’t charge for checking a bag, and have these awesome snack packs with Doritos and Sun Chips in them. And now they’ve made some seriously funny ads. Their Welcome Bigwigs ads are “marketed to” CEOs who have been forced to give up their commercial jets and now have to lower themselves to flying with the plebes. Plus, assistants get a shoutout at the end. Enjoy:
Hero alert! A lot of STA readers have reported that their boss is doing something illegal, but they’re either worried about being dragged into the mess or not being believed when they report it. However, one assistant was able to do the right thing – and help a lot of other people in the process. An unnamed assistant in England was the whistleblower who suspected Lynne Greenwood, director of a nonprofit organization, of embezzling money from the company. The assistant began to suspect that the company’s numbers were off. Turns out that Greenwood, 57, had become a compulsive shopper and was using the charity’s money to pay her credit card bills to the tune of almost £53,000 (roughly $73K). Greenwood has been ordered to pay back the money she stole and was sentenced to 11 months in prison.
Congratulations, assistant! I am hoping the reason your name has not been made public is because you are awesome and modest and want to go on with your life, not because the British press doesn’t want to acknowledge you.
I’ve heard about workers allegedly being fired for being a vegetarian or wearing too much perfume, but a man in Queens, New York may have them all beat – he was allegedly fired because of a tuna sandwich. Ralph Reese, 57, was working in the deli section of the enormous Whole Foods outpost in Union Square. He was fired from his job after he allegedly grabbed an uneaten, still-wrapped tuna sandwich out of the trash at the store. Reese claims that he set the sandwich aside for himself, but that his supervisor threw it away. Whole Foods claims that their store policy is that employees do not get free food – they get a 20 percent store discount, and they’re allowed to try free samples as long as they check with their supervisor and the amount they eat is logged. (Seriously?) Now, the story is hitting the big time as Reese tries to sue his former employer for unemployment benefits.
Elizabeth A. Shollenberger, director of government benefits and consumer law for Queens Legal Services, said that in the last six months her office had seen an uptick of cases like Mr. Reese’s, in which unemployment claims were being challenged. It is a phenomenon happening not only in New York, but also across the country. “A lot more people are getting fired for very minor reasons,” said Ms. Shollenberger, who represented Mr. Reese.
“What we are seeing is that they are firing people for ‘misconduct’ when what they are really doing is downsizing and it’s an attempt to not pay benefits,” she said.
Last year, she said, her office was seeing three or four such cases a week. Now she estimated that they are seeing 15 to 20 cases a week, 80 percent of which she says have merit. (Nationwide, employees win in two-thirds of the cases.)
Jessica Simpson confuses tuna with chicken and becomes a TV star. This guy tries to set aside a tuna sandwich for himself and gets fired? Were they afraid of him getting “mercury poisoning” a la Jeremy Piven?
There are a lot of ways that being laid off is awesome: you have free time to sleep late and watch Judge Judy reruns, for example. But there are a lot of ways that being laid off sucks, and one of them is figuring out how to find a new job and dance around explaining that you left your last job because you were laid off. Here are some tips for networking while you’re unemployed:
Update your social networking pages – and your blog if you have one – to look professional or at least not embarrassing. Remove the lolcats and the pictures of you shotgunning beers with your friends. You want people who might Google you to find things that make them want to hire you.
Remember that there is a world of difference between being laid off and being fired. Being laid off is not your fault – it’s a company’s financial decision and almost always has nothing to do with your job performance. Don’t forget that.
Have a backup plan. When someone asks what you’re doing now, you should be honest and admit that you were laid off. However, you should also be able to say you’re working part time, volunteering somewhere, going back to school, finally writing your novel, or something else. You want to have something else to talk about besides your layoff, and you’ll show that you have lots of other things going on in your life besides working – or lying on the couch watching TV.
Use your twitter, blog, or other public social networking site to talk about your skills and your job search. Be subtle about it – avoid talking about how much of an expert you are or how much companies are begging to work with you.
Most of us hate performance reviews the way that we hated parent/teacher conferences when we were kids: who really likes to be evaluated, especially when the evaluator is someone you might not even like? However, Alexander Kjerulf over at the Happy at Work blog has some actual practical reasons why we should do away with the performance review, namely that a) they’re a waste of time, and b) everyone – employees and managers alike – hates them. In addition, they’re also too formal and stilted (making it difficult to probe further into issues), rely too heavily on quantifying stuff that can’t be quantified, and they often become the only boss/employee interaction, meaning that problems can go on way too long before they get corrected.
It is normal – and expected – for famous people to delegate tasks to their assistant. After all, if you’re on the set of your movie for 12 hours a day, why not send your assistant to grocery shop for you? However, I feel like there are some people who delegate so much to their assistant(s) that there’s nothing left for them to do except drink, do drugs, court the paparazzi for “unplanned” photo ops, and have inappropriate relationships with people.
For those of you who may not have heard of British reality star Jade Goody, 
Sorry, I love a good pun.
I’ve heard about workers allegedly being fired for 
There are a lot of ways that being laid off is awesome: you have free time to sleep late and watch Judge Judy reruns, for example. But there are a lot of ways that being laid off sucks, and one of them is figuring out how to find a new job and dance around explaining that you left your last job because you were laid off. Here are some tips for networking while you’re unemployed:
