Let me tell you a little about me. I used to have a really horrible assistant job. Like, really horrible. And then I quit without having a new one. And then I went to the Bahamas just because I could. And the day before I left I got offered a really wonderful job. I am still at the really wonderful job now. Evidence?
Today I came back from a meeting to find a Post-It note on my computer screen. The note read Look under your desk for a gift from [Name of boss] and [Name of boss' wife]. I look under my desk and find a brand-new, very cute yoga mat. It means that
a) my boss, and his super cool wife, know how much I enjoy yoga, which means
b) they know and care about me as a person outside of this job, and
c) there is hope. There is hope, because a year ago I was at a job that made me so depressed I didn’t have a life outside of work.
I leave you with this, assistants of the world. Save the Assistants will be off next week doing maintenance and other fun things. We’ll be back in the office with you on January 2, still nursing a wicked New Year’s hangover.
-Lilit
I used to work for a media agency that had fairly strict rules about when we should be at work. I, of course, did not share their enthusiasm for these strict rules and would wander in a few minutes (or 15 minutes… or, like, 30 minutes) late fairly regularly. This eventually resulted in such passive-aggressive tactics as the office manager walking by my desk every morning to make sure I was there, or checking the intranet chat board to see when I logged on. Actually, the CEO would check that daily to see when everybody logged on. My own boss would even ask me to log her in if she was running late so she wouldn’t get in trouble. And she was a VP.
Thankfully not everyone shares my old employers’ strict sense of timeliness. In a rather progressive and totally awesome move, Best Buy has begun allowing their corporate employees to come and go as they want. Are you done with your work at 3pm? Go to a movie! Had a rough night at the pub? Sleep it off! (But maybe keep that to yourself.) Read below to find out more. Oh, and try to curb your jealousy. – Ashley
Smashing the Clock
“The goal at Best Buy is to judge performance on output instead of hours.”
Editor’s note: We here at STA are not always all about the gruesome, gory details. Sometimes we hear stories about people who haven’t had to endure verbal vivisection or had Petri dishes thrown at their head. We want you to know about those stories, too. Few and far between as they seem to be. – Ashley & Lilit
I used to work for a film producer who was a bit of a gambler. Okay, perhaps I’m understating it…let’s just say there were a few years “in between movies” where his tax return actually listed his profession as “producer/gambler” (I know this, because I was the one perched in his accountant’s office combing through the crumpled Vegas markers). Producers who gamble isn’t exactly a new revelation, but this guy took it to a new extreme. We had one of those great boss/friend/borderline spousal relationships (which of course eventually went very, very wrong – but before that was actually a lot of fun), so I was privy to all sorts of sordid details about his frequent 72-hour Vegas binges. One quiet Friday, instead of popping down to a nearby deli for some lunch on the boss (what a great perk, huh?), he suggested we try something different (Spago, perhaps?). We hopped in his convertible Porsche (so cliché), and headed east…waaaaay east of Los Angeles. We landed at Santa Anita Race Track. I can still hear the angels singing as I approached the paddock for my very first time and within about 2 races, I was hooked. He had a great gambling method and when it worked, it REALLY worked, and when it didn’t – well, we’ve all seen how gambling can crush you in the blink of an eye. Eventually, by following his tried and true method, I won about $2,200! A virtual fortune for a $500/week lowly assistant! But nothing compared to his pot…$62,000! Yeah, I know! It was the most glorious day I’ve probably ever experienced. Unfortunately, as gambling tends to go, it pretty much went downhill from there! I won a couple hundred bucks here and there but nothing would ever come close to that glorious day. I quit working for him a few years after that, and have since formed my own method of playing the horses…but no boss will ever top the euphoria he gave me that day, and so I (and all the sportsbooks I’ve visited in Vegas) heartily thank him. -submitted by Jana, Los Angeles
