Monthly Archive for June, 2009

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miss california and email etiquette

Published on June 11, 2009 in Survival Guide. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

The now-former Miss California USA, Carrie Prejean, whose comments about gay marriage and internet feud with Perez Hilton made her way more famous than the actual Miss USA winner (who is from my home state of North Carolina – go NC!), has finally lost her crown. The official reason stated by the pageant was that Prejean violated her contract by doing appearances without clearing them/getting them approved by the state pageant board. Obviously they are really pissed at her, because they leaked (or allowed to leak) an email exchange between her and California pageant director Keith Lewis. Here is one of the emails Prejean sent (you can see the whole exchange on Jezebel):

I expect you to be forwarding me ALL email requests and interview requests to me. I know how you are and its not right if you are selecting things for me. Thanks for your cooperation And fyi I am a presenter of medals at the special olympics in a few weeks for the summer games. So now u know I am doing this and I expect your full support. Also I was asked to fill in for a dj on a local radio show.. Ill be reading from a show biz script monday. I am doing this

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cleavage at the office

Published on June 11, 2009 in Junk Drawer. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

As I’ve said before, women have it way harder than men when it comes to appropriate office dressing, especially in the summer. In addition to figuring out hemline length and strap thickness, there’s one more element to summertime business casual: cleavage.

If you’re on the flatter side, like me, it’s a lot easier to get away with wearing lower cut tops at work, since it’s incredibly unlikely you’ll have anything to expose. But if you’ve been blessed with a fuller figure, you have to be extra careful about what you wear. It’s sad but true – even though you didn’t ask for your boobs or ask everyone to base their opinions of you on said boobs, they will. People will talk to your breasts instead of your face and, at work, when you’re doing everything you can to be taken seriously, a button coming loose at an inopportune moment could be the kiss of death. Depending what industry you’re in, cleavage can go either way – I’ve known women who work at restaurants and get better tips if they show more skin, as well as women in fashion who hide their breasts when the gamine look is back in style.

Based on my own entirely unscientific survey, cleavage was fine if you had a male boss and totally verboten if you had a female one. Do any of you have such stories to report about your own boobs or someone else’s in the office?

jessica zajicek/kathy griffin update

Published on June 10, 2009 in Celebrity Assistant Soapbox. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , .

As I reported last July and again this April, “Team Griffin” member and Kathy Griffin’s assistant Jessica Zajicek quit both her job and Kathy’s Emmy-winning Bravo show, My Life on the D-List. Though there’s been a lot of speculation about why Jessica left, ranging from the innocuous “she wanted to do something else” to the potentially-scandalous “she hated Kathy’s guts and couldn’t take it anymore,” Jessica has not offered up any official comment on the matter.

Monday night, the new season of My Life on the D-List debuted, and Kathy addressed Jessica’s absence with a very quick and brusque “Jessica has decided not to return and is pursuing other interests.” For now, former second assistant Tiffany Rinehart is working alone, and there has also been no mention of whether she’ll seek a new assistant to fill her old role. Perhaps Team Griffin has felt the effects of the bad economy and has had to cut back on hiring?

Either way, there’s no smoke, so for the time being there’s no fire. That said, if Jessica ever wants to give me an exclusive interview about the real reasons she quit her assistant job, I am all ears.

bruce willis becomes an intern

Published on June 10, 2009 in Interns and Video. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Last night I was all ready to commend David Letterman for making a point of thanking his summer interns on The Late Show, but then the “thank the unpaid help” bit turned into a hilarious segment showing Bruce Willis as one of the intern crew. Here’s Bruce in action as he gives dating advice, makes copies, and runs errands:

the pope has an assistant, too

Published on June 9, 2009 in Fictional Assistants. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

So it shouldn’t surprise me that the Pope has a personal assistant. I mean, it’s not like he can just dash over to the bodega and get a snack whenever he feels like it. Plus, the Popemobile seems like kind of a pain to navigate. The assistant is called a “camerlengo,” (which is Italian for “chamberlain”) and in the movie Angels & Demons, he’s played by the very hot Ewan McGregor, although the movie loses points for trying to hide his hotness behind all those layers of clothes. Although history shows that the person serving as the Camerlengo is almost always Italian, McGregor is Scottish. Fun things I learned about the camerlengo include:

  • If the Pope is dead, it’s the camerlengo’s job to verify that. He does so by hitting the Pope on the head three times with a silver hammer.
  • Until a new Pope is chosen, the Camerlengo is the acting head of state for the Vatican.
  • It is possible to get promoted, even if the odds aren’t in your favor: three past camerlengoes (?) have later been elected Pope.

Fascinating. Thanks, Wikipedia!

assistant accuses CEO of rape

Published on June 9, 2009 in Assistants in the News. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

An employee of Margarete Steiff GmbH, a German-based toymaker (whose best-known product are cute, cuddly teddy bears like the one at right) is suing her former boss, CEO Martin Frechen, of rape. Jane Collins, who used to be Frechen’s personal assistant and has since been promoted to assistant US marketing manager, is suing Frechen and the company for $80 million. She alleges that while she was Frechen’s assistant, he repeatedly sexually assaulted her over a five year period.

While this story is horrible and I commend Ms. Collins for coming out about what happened to her, my first question was why does she still work for the company? Sadly, she, like many others, felt trapped in her job and desperately needed the money.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Ms. Collins, a 32-year-old mother of two, said she didn’t go to the police about the alleged rape “because I was afraid I would lose my job if I did.” She said she has continued to work at Steiff because she needs the job, and because it pays better than similar positions elsewhere.

In the interview, Ms. Collins claimed that she wasn’t able to escape. “He’s six four and very strong, and I’m five seven,” she said. The complaint alleges that during the assault, Ms. Collins repeatedly told Mr. Frechen to stop and he responded by saying that this would be their “last time together,” and that “it is OK.”

This story absolutely disgusts me, and I am willing to bet that for every Jane Collins who has the courage to speak out there are many more who still say nothing because they’re afraid for their jobs. Another defendant named in the suit is another executive who Collins says she went to about the harrassment and who did nothing. Perhaps that’s the scariest part of all – when she finally did go to someone in a position of authority at the company, that person did nothing.

I wish Jane Collins all the best of luck with her suit and hope that justice will be served.

when layoffs are good for you

Published on June 8, 2009 in Saved. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Jessica Ward was laid off from her job in the Seattle area last December. Like many of us who have been laid off recently, she was initially angry and hurt. But within a few months she came to realize that getting laid off was one of the best things ever to happen to her. Being unemployed gave her the motivation to start a business she’d been thinking about but never acted on, spend some quality time with her kids, and rethink her notion of what a successful career was. Jessica then wrote an open letter to her former boss, which appeared in BusinessWeek, thanking him for laying her off. Among other things, she writes:

We thought this layoff would be a crushing financial blow and opted to hand-make all of our Christmas gifts. They were a huge hit with our family and friends and we spent several wonderful days together as a family creating them. We didn’t at all miss the experience of circling the mall for hours looking for a parking spot. The kids didn’t sit on Santa’s lap at Macy’s but we did run into him at a neighborhood ice hockey game and snapped a photo. I’ll mail you one.

We wrote out our household budget for the first time ever, and we stuck to it. I wrote a business plan to start my business, and my husband encouraged me to restart the freelance writing career that I’d put on hold six years ago when I got married. Now I work only part-time for myself and I write part time. I never commute. My wonderful kids are thriving. And as for that student loan payment I wasn’t sure I could make in December? I paid the balance of the loan off in full in February, three years ahead of schedule.

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a real housewife gets an assistant

Published on June 8, 2009 in Video. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Over the weekend my best friend and I watched a marathon of The Real Housewives of New Jersey, and I have to pretty much admit that I am hooked. There are thick awesome accents, Botox parties, and this one crazy bitch named Danielle who apparently used to be a stripper/coke fiend/girlfriend of a Miami drug lord. Anyway, one of the show’s two sisters married to brothers is Dina Manzo. I really enjoy Dina – she complains her boobs are too big for her to be a good tennis player, her wedding was featured on VH1’s My Big Fat Fabulous Wedding, and she’s a stealth bitch. Anyway, although Dina is a housewife in the traditional sense (unlike most of the women on other incarnations of the show), she has a part-time interior design gig and runs a nonprofit that raises money for a kids’ cancer ward in a local hospital. So of course she and her creepy hairless cat need a personal assistant. From the way she behaves with her assistant, she might also need a guy on the side, but I guess that storyline is for next season:

is ‘undermanagement’ a problem?

Published on June 5, 2009 in Buzzwords. 0 Comments Tags: , .

“I know you can be overwhelmed, and you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?”

“I think you can in Europe.”

- Ten Things I Hate About You

OK, I’ll stop with the quoting of awesome ’90s movies now. But that was the first thing that popped into my head when I saw an article in today’s NY Daily News about something called “undermanagement.” I have to admit, usually the thing people complain the most regarding bosses and the workplace is being micromanaged – having a boss who breathes down their neck all the time and hyperstresses about even the smallest and most irrelevant of tasks. Now, we’re also supposed to be worried that someone might be managing too little? This kind of reminds me of how tabloids freak out whenever a celebrity puts on a pound or two and immediately starts a round-the-clock “bumpwatch” but then castigate her when she loses any weight and accuses her of having an eating disorder. There’s no middle ground, and there’s no way to win.

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meet carla bruni’s “fixer”

Published on June 5, 2009 in Celebrity Assistant Soapbox. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

I have heard a lot of euphemisms for “assistant,” but I have to say that “fixer” is one of the better ones. French first lady Carla Bruni (who is also a model, singer/songwriter, fashion icon, and overall badass) is now the subject of a tell-all book written by her former “fixer,” which is apparently French for assistant/chauffeur. Franck Demules’ book is not a typical expose, though. He seems to idolize Bruni and describes her as a veritable saint in the drug and alcohol soaked scene that she ran in. People who make cameos in the book include everyone from Mick Jagger to Karl Lagerfeld. There’s also an awesome mention of STA’s favorite evil boss, Naomi Campbell:

Serving Bruni has its tough moments, he says. One was taking Naomi Campbell shopping. On a visit to Au Bon Marché, the Left Bank department store, the former supermodel was so fierce that no-one dared talk to her, he writes.

As for Bruni, Demules credits her for the help and support to overcome a crippling cocaine addiction. I think it’s pretty safe to say she’s a great boss, right?