I was the executive assistant to the CEO of an ad agency. Most of my job involved checking my boss’ voice mail, getting her skirts hemmed, watching her dog on Fridays when he came to work with her, and keeping her calendar, but occasionally I was asked to help with new business presentations. My primary new business role was to babysit the Chief Strategic Officer (aka, Princess Slacker) who was also my boss’ BFF. This woman had a lot of education, but very little real success in business. For some reason my boss thought she was a genius and wouldn’t do a new business pitch without her input.
Princess Slacker was rarely in the office. She “worked from home” or from the tennis court or from the nail salon or something most of the time. I guess her best strategic marketing insights came to her during the cuticle soak. When we had a new business prospect she would wait until the very last minute to write her portion of the presentation. Since she was completely computer-illiterate, she had to have help getting her part of the deck typed and formatted, which is where I came in.
One Friday before a big pitch scheduled for Monday morning she swooped down to my desk in her Ferragamo shoes at 4:45 p.m., ready to start working. She informed me that she would need my help over the weekend, and even though I had been dogging her all week to get something from her for the pitch, I of course agreed (what choice did I have?). We worked all day Saturday and all day Sunday. I even left a dinner party on Saturday night to go to her house to pick up more hand-written pearls of genius to add to the deck.
That Monday morning she called me and asked me to send flowers to her nanny for working over the weekend. We didn’t win the account.
- Submitted by June, New York City
For a long time, I was convinced that the office fridge at my former company was the grossest place on earth. There was, like, a permanent rotting sandwich wedged in the back that made the whole fridge smell like death, but no one could get over their squeamishness long enough to throw out said sandwich.
Well, I officially stand corrected, because the office fridge at AT&T in San Jose is officially the nastiest one ever. It was so disgusting that several workers fainted or vomited from the smell. Seven employees had to go to the hospital. It was so bad that a hazmat team had to be brought in.
Authorities said an enterprising office worker had decided to clean it out, placing the food in a conference room while using two cleaning chemicals to scrub down the mess. The mixture of old lunches and disinfectant caused 28 people to need treatment for vomiting and nausea.
Authorities said the worker who cleaned the fridge didn’t need treatment – she can’t smell because of allergies.
Merely reading this article made me want to barf. I have to go lie down now. Maybe the fake mold sandwich wasn’t such a brilliant invention after all.
I always thought designer Betsey Johnson was awesome, but now I’m not so sure. Thanks to STA reader Amanda for sending me this story from Page Six:
Quirky designer Betsey Johnson certainly gives her underlings bizarre tasks. The other day at a showroom on East 58th Street, where Johnson was shopping for bathroom fixtures, the designer was making her assistant test out toilet seats for comfort. Johnson “was wearing a yellow beach dress and had messy braids in her hair,” said the spy.
Um, having your assistant test out toilet seats for you? Not cool, Betsey. Don’t be shocked when she installs one that’s covered in tacks.
A friend recently turned me on to the website Madison Avenue War Stories, which details some appalling stuff from assistants and non-assistants alike who work at New York’s big advertising firms. Here’s a great one:
When I worked at BBDO there was this major Creative Director, Charlie. He was legendary for his cruelty. He’d have everyone in his half of the agency come into the hall and say Pizza Hut was in trouble. He’d then say ‘if we don’t save this account, everybody look to the left of you and to the right of you and that’s who will be fired. So I’m gonna look at work on Sunday night at 7 p.m. And if you want to keep your jobs you better be there. This was like on a Friday afternoon. So everybody would work all weekend and low and behold Charlie wouldn’t show up on Sunday at 7:00 p.m. or at 8, 9 , 10 or 11. He wouldn’t come in at all. He’d be off fucking some new girlfriend of his. He was on like his 4th marriage. Then Monday we’d get in a line outside his office. Then he’d call in his favorite 5 guys who he played basketball with at lunch and they’d all come up with some dogshit spot. Then Charlie would come out into the hall and say ‘thanks everybody we’ve got it covered’. But it get’s worse. Rumor has it that during an important client meeting, a very attractive account woman came rushing into the meeting late. All the seats were filled. She said “I’ve got no where to sit”. Charlie responded, in front of the client, ‘honey, as long as I’ve got a face, you’ve got a place to sit’. The woman rushed out of the room. She sued him but settled for like 100 grand. this was before the real sexual harrasment suits started.
Assistants are far from being the only mistreated ones in the office. This horror story comes via The Angry Office Manager who is, well, an office manager.
It was Dana who interviewed for my Office Manager position at GoGorilla Media. It was Dana who officially hired me over the phone; and on my first day, it was Dana who enthusiastically greeted me as I got off the elevator. She asked me if she could call me Mandy. I only go by Mandy with my close friends and my family, because I’m just not a Mandy. But when she called to offer me the job, I had just set up an Ebay account to sell my only pair of Prada shoes, so in my mind, she saved me and could call me whatever she wanted.
Dana had set up my desk with colorful pens and markers, the kind you ogle at art stores, but never actually buy, because although you covet them, it just seems too silly to spend money on such things. She had written me a welcome note on yellow construction paper and covered it in stars and hearts and smiley faces and everything else that a thirteen year old might draw on the cover of her notebook. It was Dana that I fired, inadvertently, a mere three months later.
Continue reading ‘horror story: beware of the cobra’
The Broadway musical 9 to 5, just like the movie it’s based on, is about employees dealing with a shitty boss. Well, it turns out that the show’s stars didn’t have to reach too far back into their memories to get some emotional recollection. Here are a couple of their worst boss stories:
I worked at this Mexican restaurant when I was in college and there was this manager who was a pompous idiot who thought he was the coolest thing on the face of the planet. He always found ways to truly annoy and criticize you and then he’d go back into his office and do a line of coke.” Best revenge “The head office [of the Mexican restaurant] brought in this new assistant manager to learn the ropes to replace the head manager. And when my boss found that out, he did everything he could to fire me. But the assistant manager came into the office with me and said, ‘You can fire Marc, but the minute he walks out that door, I’m rehiring him.’ So that was it.
- Marc Kudisch (who plays… the boss)
I worked at a talent agency here in New York answering phones. The owner of the agency would scream at me if I didn’t recognize his voice. I was so terrified every time I answered the phone. And if I screwed up, he says, ‘DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM? DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA?!’ To this day, I’m terrified of answering the phone. I think I was traumatized by that voice.
- Allison Janney (who plays Violet, the Lily Tomlin character)
I could not believe it when my company where I work (a law office) fired one of the other assistants the day before administrative assistants’ day! But when I found out what happened, I couldn’t totally blame them. See, the assistant (“Katie”) had taken a lot of sick days lately, and we all assumed she was faking because they were always on Fridays, but nobody could prove that she was faking, and besides what assistant has never lied and said they were sick when they needed a mental health day? Well, turned out the bosses were suspicious too. They looked at her calendar and the last couple of Fridays she had blocked off the whole day and written “Go to DC to visit boyfriend.” How could she be that stupid?! If you really need a calendar reminder to go visit your boyfriend, then what kind of relationship do you guys have anyway? Plus, the really stupid part was that it wasn’t even her computer calendar – it was the paper one on her desk. Duh.
-Submitted by Mark, New York City
STA reader Maria recently forwarded me a link to “Annie’s Mailbox,” an online advice column. Annie’s column recently featured a letter from a reader with a very unusual workplace problem. It made me so angry (but, fortunately, Annie gave her very sound advice which helped me to feel less stabby) that I just had to post it verbatim:
Dear Annie: Last week I was told by our office manager that the director “doesn’t like your hairstyle and you need to do something with it.” Annie, my hair is growing back from chemo.
I was extremely upset by this and went home in tears.
Today I met with our director, who read from our employee manual: “If it is determined that an employee is inappropriately dressed or groomed, he or she will be instructed to make necessary changes.” She thought my hair looked unprofessional.
Annie, I could understand if my hair was green or in dreadlocks, but it’s not. Now I’m being told I may lose my job. What do you think? — Trying My Best
Dear Trying: We think your director may be in violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act since your hairstyle is a result of chemotherapy treatment. Check with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (eeoc.gov) at 1-800-669-4000. The director’s reaction to your hair seems peculiar and punitive. If she has a boss, we strongly urge you to take this to a higher authority.
Ugh, this is just horrible. I hope “Trying My Best” takes Annie’s advice – and that she kicks her boss’ butt.
My old boss, a magazine editor, was not happy with the order in which hits were appearing when you typed her name into Google. So she asked me to call Google and ask if they would switch them around. I could just picture her face if I had even attempted to use the word “algorithm”, so I just said yes. When she asked me about it again, weeks later, I told her I had left Google a message and was waiting for a call back. You know those tech folks, always so busy…
-Submitted by Rose, New York City
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.
