The best way to apologize for sending too many emails is … to send out an email apologizing for the emails. – Consumerist
Need to hate someone? I’d suggest tossing some ire in the direction of these Wall Street types who know that even if they fuck up they’ll still get massive bonuses. – Business Insider
If you are Bill Maher’s assistant, one of your responsibilities will be taking back his girlfriend’s car after they break up. – Crazy Days and Nights
Though this list of 25 Guys to Avoid on Wall Street is aimed at people in the business world, it also doubles as a guide to who not to date. – CNBC
A man got fired for … wait for it … working too much. To be fair, that meant he was taking on side jobs while on the clock, but still. – News.com.au
Being smart is good. But being easy to get along with in the workplace is way more important. Here’s why. – Wall Street Journal
Meredith Koop has gotten promoted from Michelle Obama’s personal assistant to her personal shopper. Upgrade! – Washington Post
You should kick ass at your career because it makes you happy and brings in money. Oh, and because guys find “powerful women” hot. – Cosmopolitan
There are many ways to tell someone that your relationship is over. Some people break up in person. Kelsey Grammer told his wife Camille to stay in a hotel when she flew out to attend the Tonys with him. And, in the case of Tammy Lynn Michaels and Melissa Etheridge, the sex toy delivery was the tip-off. Tammy Lynn says that she knew something was up in their marriage when Melissa’s assistant delivered a box of dildos to her house by accident. She wrote (although that’s using the word loosely):
three weeks later a box of new toys
was delivered and her assistant brought
it to my rental house as a mistake
i opened it
and that’s when i felt something was up
i called her
“i have your new dicks on my kitchen counter?”
one thing by one thing
i slowly felt things were not
as
they were being represented
If E.E. Cummings had written about getting dumped via a sex toy delivery error, that is probably exactly what he would have written.
Sometimes, assistants fuck up. They get a coffee order wrong or file papers out of order. But nothing comes close to this story about the assistant of Guns N Roses drummer Steven Adler:
Cops had come pounding on the door. They had obtained a warrant and searched my house. When I asked why, I was horrified by the explanation. My ex-assistant, Rocko the pervert. This terminal whack job, who had tried to videotape unsuspecting people in my bathroom through a hole in the celing, had just been arrested for suspicion of murder. What the fuck? Apparently, he was kidnapping girls, drugging them, and then videotaping the unconscious victims in various positions and sex acts. They raided his home and found dozens of videotapes containg the graphic rape footage. They also found pictures of my ex-girl Analise and my mom Deanna. Rocko had been spying on us and taking pictures the whole time he had been staying with me.
Um, dude? Not cool. Check the assistant handbook – this isn’t in there.
Fashion Week just wrapped up here in New York. Some shows, like Rodarte, got great reviews. And some shows, like Zac Posen, did not. But lest you think the person who designed the clothes had anything to do with the show’s negative reviews, you should remember that it is always the assistant’s fault. According to Page Six:
Insiders say Posen’s executive assistant, who also managed the designer’s p.r. for the past few months, quit a week before the show. Then his casting director walked out three days beforehand. Insiders described Posen’s show as “disorganized,” with some VIPs, including Claire Danes and Kristin Cavallari, not having seat assignments.
Political assistants have very tough jobs – I mean, I just rewatched that episode of The West Wing where the documentary crew follows CJ around for the day and you see her interact with one aide (played by the awesome Wilson Cruz of My So-Called Life) and it’s definitely stressful. However, one aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton might have gotten canned for a major gaffe last month. What happened? Well, the assistant was charged with setting up a conference call – a pretty common assistant task – but instead of sending out the 1-800 number for the call, accidentally sent out the number for a phone sex hotline. Luckily, the assistant sent out a followup email with the correct information, but several of the participants had already dialed the wrong number and were none too pleased about it.
I hope for the assistant’s sake Hillary and co realized it was a simple (and kind of funny) excuse, and not a matter of national security. Good luck, intrepid assistant!
Normally, it’s good for an assistant to be thorough and to remember stuff their boss talked about/asked about months ago. But one of Rihanna’s assistants – either Jennifer Morales or Melissa Ford – was a little too thorough. She found gifts that Rihanna had purchased for ex-boyfriend Chris Brown when they were still together and sent them to Brown for his birthday. Ooops!
From MSNBC:
Chris Brown turned 20 on May 5, and Rihanna accidentally showered him in gifts.
“One of Rihanna’s assistants accidentally gave him an expensive pair of sneakers and a watch that Rihanna had bought before they broke up,” a source told Us Weekly. “She no longer wanted to send them.”
The assistant was probably well-intentioned, but this is why you have to think things through, people.
Remember when Annie Liebowitz’s assistant left his iPhone in the back of a cab? Luckily, it was returned, but only after being hacked. The worst thing to come out of it was the theft of some celebrities’ personal phone numbers and email addresses. However, an aide of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown (that was a lot of capital letters in a row) accidentally left some important papers in their backpack in the back of a cab in London. Among the info contained in said paperwork? Confidential information about the Prime Minister’s spending, a schedule for an upcoming trip… and his makeup shopping list. Ooops.
Among the beauty products Brown had on his list:
- Clinique “super-balanced” makeup
- A transparent foam brush
- Guerlain blush in Terra Cotta
A government spokesperson would only confirm that the bag and its contents were returned to the assistant, but there’s no word on whether the poor soul was fired or just reprimanded.
Pull an Amelia Bedelia:
The act of baking something delicious in order to make up for a major screw-up at work.
Ex: “I totally bombed my performance review, but then I pulled an Amelia Bedelia and brought in some pumpkin-ginger cookies and now I’m getting a raise!”
If you read any of the Amelia Bedelia books as a kid – like I did – then you’ll totally appreciate this one. Have you ever noticed how many of the “quirky” heroines for little girls had red hair? Amelia, Anne Shirley, Pippi Longstocking, Anastasia Krupnik, and Mallory from The Babysitters Club. Maybe I care too much about this.
[This buzzphrase was shamelessly stolen from the wonderful hortense over at Jezebel.]
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
Lindsay Lohan, assistants, and cars are a pretty bad combination. First, Lindsay got a DUI when she was in her car trying to chase down former assistant Tarin when she quit suddently – that incident brought us a whole wave of joyous things, including Lindsay’s mugshot and claiming that she was wearing someone else’s coke-in-the-pockets jeans. Now, Lindsay’s assistant (she wasn’t named in the article, but I assume it’s longsuffering PA Jenni Muro, who reportedly once rescued her boss from drowning in a bathtub) has apparently ran LiLo’s brand new Maserati into a parked car. The car, which Lindsay bought after finally getting her driver’s license back, cost $100,000. Repairing that will probably cost more than Jenni makes in a year.
