Anyone who’s worked in an office can tell you that assistants are the rulers of the office – their titles may not make it official, but we all sees what happens when an assistant leaves for a day and the whole place goes to hell because no one else can figure out how to use the telephone. But what happens when an assistant really is royalty? Enter Peggielene Bartels.
Bartels, a native of Ghana, works as a secretary at the Ghanaian embassy in Washington, DC. But one morning her whole life changed:
The 90-year-old king of Otuam, a town of 7,000 residents an hour’s drive from Ghana’s capital, had just died, the caller said. The king, as it happened, was Bartels’s uncle. The town elders had performed a ritual to choose his successor, praying and pouring schnapps on the ground and waiting for steam to rise as they announced the names of 25 relatives. The steam would signify which name the ancestors had blessed as the new king.
Bartels, the caller said, was Otuam’s new Nana, with power to resolve disputes, appoint elders and manage more than 1,000 acres of family-owned land.
Bartels divides her time between Washington and Otuam. She’s even personally funding repairs to the royal palace in Otuam. Here’s to Peggielene – and her kickass work ethic. If I found out I was now royalty, I’d probably not even make it ten minutes before quitting my job, but 55-year-old Peggielene still goes into work and keeps on keeping on.
It’s been an interesting few weeks for ex-assistant lawsuits, hasn’t it? First Patricia Heaton, and now newly-minted Emmy winner Tyra Banks. TMZ, who apparently has a staffer permanently camped out at the Los Angeles County courthouse, has obtained a copy of a lawsuit against Tyra by one of her former assistants, Richard Thomas:
Thomas is suing for back wages plus a little extra. The complaint says Thomas wants the money for “services rendered as assistant and advisor.”
Exactly what kind of “advising” was he doing? Did he just tell her which of the two wigs she was choosing between looked prettier on her? And doesn’t $5K seem like kind of a small lawsuit? This does not seem to be as juicy as the Patricia Heaton lawsuit, but you never know.
Some hockey players, like vanity internship poster boy Sean Avery, decide to switch careers and go from sports to fashion. Hockey player Mark Messier, on the other hand, decided to make a move within his industry. The multiple Stanley Cup winner has just been hired as the assistant general manager for his former team, the New York Rangers. He has been retired from playing since 2005, and his #11 jersey was retired by the Rangers and now hangs in Madison Square Garden.
There are some rumors that the move is merely a placeholder until the current GM retires and Messier can step into the position, but I for one find it really cool that this dude with so many accomplishments and so much name recognition is willing to put in some hard work and try out a new role in the industry he loves. Team Messier could kick Team Avery’s butt any day.
When bosses say they want their personal assistants to be available at any time, some of them really mean it. Jennifer LeRoy, who owns the popular New York restaurant Tavern On the Green, allegedly fired assistant Jamie Mora just a week after Mora told her boss she was pregnant. The New York Post reports that Mora is now suing LeRoy for back wages and damages.
The high-strung heiress hired Mora to handle her personal and business affairs in 2004 and to make herself “available to Ms. LeRoy 24 hours a day, seven days a week throughout her tenure at Tavern,” according to court papers.
Who knows whether Mora could have worked during her pregnancy? I mean, Katherine Heigl’s assistant managed to fetch her boss Coke Zero while heavily pregnant, so there does seem to be a precedent.
If you asked me which assistants I thought got paid the most, I’d guess it was an assistant to the person who got paid the most, like a CEO or a big movie star. Thus I’d also conclude that an assistant to a monk, a person who does not earn – or spend much time thinking about – much money, didn’t have a lot of cash on hand. However, one monk’s assistant, Raymond Yeung of Singapore, decided he wanted to buck tradition. The assistant to Buddhist monk Ming Yi ran up credit card debt and even took out a loan to finance his extravagant lifestyle. He accepted a loan from Ren Ci, a hospital that Ming Yi founded, even though he was not able to pay it back. He – and his boss – are currently on trial.
What would former monk’s assistant Leonard Cohen have to say about this, I wonder?
If you’re a diehard Devil Wears Prada aficionado and you thought that assistant life couldn’t possibly get worse at Conde Nast, think again. A spy tells Gawker.com that the publishing behemoth has come up with some ‘creative’ ways to try and keep the assistants hard at work:
So now we have incentives to be good assistants because there is an assistant of the month prize of $500. I’m going to be the model assistant, lol. A couple of those and mama can buy herself a chanel bag or some loubs!
That’s great for the lucky assistant who gets recognized that month, but when everyone is making close to a poverty-level wage it really doesn’t help. How many assistants do they have at Conde, anyway?
While the assistants are toiling away in hopes of winning a bonus, it seems like the interns have finally had enough. A sign was posted in the breakrooms informing Conde employees they will have to wash their own dishes instead of the interns doing it for them. The whole note is here, glorious, and totally worth reading, but here’s my favorite part: “I know, I know: you went to Vassar, you have a rich husband, you’ve never washed a dish in your life.” I want to hire whoever penned that note to run this blog for me when I go on vacation. Call me, intern!
Just when I thought former Naomi Campbell assistant Rebecca White – who decided to announce to the world she’d seen Heath Ledger do drugs with Naomi just hours after Ledger’s death – she’s back in the news again. This time, she’s attached herself to the biggest story in the news, the death of Michael Jackson. TMZ reports that White is being sued by Jackson’s ex-wife (and mom of his two older kids), Debbie Rowe. White appeared last night on the tabloid TV show EXTRA and spoke about conversations she allegedly had with Rowe.
In a defamation lawsuit filed today, Rowe claims White defamed her when she went on EXTRA and said she has an email from Debbie saying, “Do I want the kids? Hell no. Does it look good for me to ask for them? Absolutely.”
Rowe claims the emails are bogus.
And, Rowe claims, White is like Zelig, surfacing in a number of high-profile scandals. The suit alleges White claimed to have been a personal assistant for Naomi Campbell back in 2001 and made allegations Campbell forced her to smuggle drugs.
Regardless what I may think about Debbie Rowe, I can’t help but think she has a point about Rebecca White. White does have an ability to try and get herself in the news whenever there’s a celebrity death scandal, and that reeks of insincerity.
One of my hugest pet peeves is people telling me, apropos of nothing, to smile more. Usually, it’s some dude on the street who just cat-called me and doesn’t understand why I don’t appreciate his sexytime advances, but I’ve definitely heard it from bosses as well. I don’t think that forcing someone to put on a happy face actually makes them any happier, but it seems that the Japanese railway company Keihin Electric has installed a new software into workers’ computers in order to monitor the facial happiness of their employees. The software will periodically scan the employee’s face and note eye movements, mouth wrinkles, and other factors to determine how happy their face looks.
For those with low scores, advice like “You still look too serious,” or “Lift up your mouth corners,” will be displayed on the screen.
Some 530 employees of the Tokyo-based railway company will check their smiles with Smile Scan before starting work each day. They will print out and carry around an image of their best smile in an attempt to remember it.
I can only imagine this making me even more angry, but perhaps it goes over better for others? Tell me what you think.
Depending which article you read, Grace Rwaramba was either the late Michael Jackson’s personal assistant or his kids’ nanny. (Maybe both.) It seems that older articles have the Uganda native listed as his assistant, including one that I wrote about here on STA, while newer ones refer to her as the nanny. However, the Mirror (UK) is now alleging that not only was Rwaramba responsible for Michael’s three children, she was also his secret girlfriend.
Ian Barkley, who travelled the world with Jacko for three years as his personal photographer, says the couple’s romance was an open secret among staff after they fell in love while she was nanny to his children.
“Grace loved Michael and he loved her,” he said. “The kids called her ‘Mom’.”
And here’s something that helps explain her shifting job title:
Grace was introduced to Jacko by his former spokesman Dr Tohme R Tohme in 1991. She started out as a secretary before working her way up to become the most important woman in the superstar’s life.
In 1999 she was picked to care for Jackson’s oldest kids following his divorce from second wife Debbie Rowe. She became the dominant figure in their lives with one insider noting: “Everything is done Grace’s way.”
Continue reading ‘hey, remember grace rwaramba?’
Directly from Alice Cooper’s personal MySpace page:
It is with extreme sadness that we need to inform the community of Alice Cooper fans of the passing of Brian “Renfield” Nelson, Alice’s long-time archivist and personal assistant. It was a sudden, completely unexpected, and untimely passing. We would appreciate it if you would keep him in your thoughts, appreciate his many contributions to Alice’s life and career over the years, and respect Brian’s privacy and the privacy of Alice and his extended family (at home and on tour) at this time.
Alice is currently on tour in Russia, because the show must go on, which is as Brian would have wanted it.
“Ren,” as he was called, was both an assistant and a fan. It was through his fandom (he collected Alice memorabilia which included Alice’s original birth certificate) that he got the gig as Alice’s PA. He had been working as Alice’s assistant since the early ’80s.
A lot of STA is devoted to kvetching about assistant life, but it’s always worth pointing out when an assistant is truly happy at his or her job, as Ren always seemed to be. May he rest in peace.
