save the assistants

It was to be a steep run-up to the conference deadline. Documents had to be perfect; presentations perfect; flights perfectly aligned; passports current. Margery thought she had all of her ducks in a row and all boxes ticked, thanks to her trusty and hard working staff, including yours truly. However, as the date approached, her demands came thick and fast. Also gathering traction was her enormous personality disorder. Let’s say that Margery came pre-packed, with steamer trunks full of “issues”. Being a psychiatrists wet dream, she would often take great delight in reducing staff to tears, for the slightest thing, such as the fax machine running out of paper. Many a note was placed on her personnel file.

Nevertheless, one day, after a particularly troublesome morning battling with subway delays and trying to find a teller machine in torrential rain, I had just about had enough. Her phone rang and as she was not at her desk, I picked up the call. The person on the other end was equally as rude and bad tempered, as Margery. Seriously, Margery was so bad tempered she would have been rejected as a contestant for the Jerry Springer Show. However, she proceeded to bellow through the office, “Well!!!, Who is it???” My reply, “Your Parole Officer. They want to know if you have tried to take your ankle tracking device off again!”. This started the ball rolling for a vehement onslaught from her, up to and including the day that she was to leave for the conference. Fortunately, I was feeling in a particularly strong mood and was determined to not have Margery derail me.

“Karma, karma, karma”, I chanted under my breath, along with “Bring it on, Bitch!”, as I pondered whether I should put ground-up glass in her coffee. Unfortunately, Karma didn’t come during those final weeks, but her departure did, which brought an air of peace on the whole company.

Continue reading ‘horror story: the beagle basher’

Once again, here’s another one of those “reporter shocked to discover that some people are less-than-completely-nice to their employees” articles. This one comes courtesy of the Telegraph and reports that many secretaries and assistants in the UK have to do personal tasks for their bosses, even when it does not fall under their immediate job description. Such tasks include:

• Bathe her boss’ elderly mother
• Help with the boss’ kids’ homework (translation: do it for them)
• Mend the boss’ clothes

According to Rosemary Parr of a “PA training firm” called Global PA Network:

“The perception of the role is stuck in a time warp from 40 or 50 years ago when secretaries were seen as surrogate wives or housekeepers. Now they are more like management assistants - they need to be their managers’ second brain, anticipating what their bosses want next as well as doing what they want now, but what our research has shown is that they are not getting the recognition for it.”

This shouldn’t shock anyone who has ever actually worked as an assistant. Right, Joan Holloway?

I work at a busy music booking agency and we have a variety of characters in the music industry calling in. There are three of us who answer the phones, one of us started 3 months ago, myself who started not even 2 months ago, and another who started 2 weeks ago. The guy in question reps one of our artists who is barely working, but he also represents an A list pop starlet, so he thinks he is above being nice to assistants. This week all the assistants got a mass email from my boss:

Hey all you on the front lines of the telephone answering;

Got a mild complaint from Redacted’s manager, Redacted. When he calls, he would prefer to not be asked who he is. He was peeved that in order to get through to my office he was asked who he was. That you took the care to screen my call is great, so I have no complaint. But do your best to make sure that you remember his voice in the future, so that he does not experience that discomfort again and have to share his feelings with you directly.

Boss

- Submitted by Gloria, New York City

My boss. Asked for directions. To a meeting. Taking place across the street. !!!!!!!!

- Submitted by Helena, New York City