Tag Archive for 'Guest Post'

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guest post: reviewing ‘the proposal’

Published on June 22, 2009 in Fictional Assistants and Guest Post. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

On Friday night, a friend and I did our best to fuel the economy by going to see The Proposal, starring Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds.

As Lilit has mentioned before, Reynolds plays the assistant to Bullock’s tough as nails (and maybe a little emotionally damaged) publishing executive. When there’s a mix up involving her visa, she coerces him into marrying her in order to avoid being deported and (SPOILER ALERT) they ultimately fall in love. Like you didn’t see that one coming.

As any good tyrranical boss would, Bullock uses her best tools to get Reynolds to marry her: intimidation and abuse. Until, that is — and here’s where the ranks of assistants who went to see this movie undoubtably went “Hell yes!” — he realizes that the assistant/boss power dynamic has shifted in his favor. This, along with their amazing chemistry, provides fodder for some extremely gratifying interplay when they visit his family for the weekend.

Pete Chiarelli, the film’s screenwriter, worked as an assistant after grad school but didn’t have a terrible experience of his own to draw from:

The idea came from me working in Hollywood, but isn’t autobiographical. Although I did work as an assistant to a woman, she was a very cool boss. However, I did have a lot of friends who worked for horrible bosses, men and women who were completely self-centered and tyrannical. But what struck me is that it paid for these bosses to be this way, it paid off for them professionally. It made sense for them to be an asshole. So, what would happen if you took one of these bosses out of their environment and forced them to act like a real human being?

What if, indeed.

everybody comes to hollywood

Published on June 22, 2009 in Guest Post. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Hey guys,

Garrett here. While Lilit is away I’m going to be helping Ashley with the upkeep of STA. I’m an assistant out in Los Angeles, working for the exec producer of a brand new hit show (shameless plug). I’ve contributed some content before (some links and, just maybe, a horror story about an old boss), but never actually written any posts, so bear with me. I’ll be filling in on Mondays and Wednesdays, bringing y’all some entertainment themed (and hopefully entertaining) items. Enjoy!

–Garr

guest post: jobs that pay more than $9.50 an hour

Published on June 22, 2009 in Guest Post. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Friday’s post about WME cutting assistant wages got me thinking. Nine dollars and fifty cents an hour is really low – like, really, really low. Even Lilit and I were paid more at our former crappy assistant jobs.

So I did a little digging to find some better-paying jobs. Not surprisingly, it wasn’t difficult to find them.

  • Take orders at In-n-Out for $12 an hour, or you can flip burgers for $13 an hour.
  • Mop floors for $12 an hour as a janitor at a hospital
  • Bag groceries at Whole Foods for $10 an hour.
  • Work for MTV as a production assistant for $14 an hour.
  • Be a prison cook for $23 an hour, or about $46K a year.
So there you have it. Oh, and by the way, the average hourly wage for an administrative assistant in their first years on the job is $11.67.
(Posted by Ashley)

guest post: alfred, best assistant a (bat)man could ask for

Published on July 21, 2008 in Fictional Assistants. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

I am one of the seven people in America who didn’t go to see “The Dark Knight” this weekend. Luckily, the always-reliable John Brooks went to a midnight screening and reports back about Alfred (Michael Caine), the loyal assistant who helps Bruce Wayne and his alter ego, Batman.

Early estimates (source: my head) put box office receipts for The Dark Knight’s opening day somewhere in the 400 bajillion dollar range. That’s good news for the fake world’s most beloved fictional PA: Alfred Pennyworth. Since I found myself with nothing else to do at 12:01 AM on Thursday night/Friday morning, I casually decided, purely on a whim, to see this largely overlooked little movie from the guy who made Memento.

Part surrogate father, part loyal servant to the great, bi-polar, largely insane avenger for justice, Bruce Wayne (known by night by his stage name “Batman”), Alfred finally gets the praise, screen time, and the chance to utter all the best aw-shucks words of comfort to Mr. Childhood Trauma he so richly deserves.

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this just in: you’re fired

Published on June 16, 2008 in Horror Stories. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

STA reader “Anna” is an employee of McClatchy, a company that owns newspapers all over the country, from the Sacramento Bee to the Miami Herald. Employees found out on the news–not from their superiors–that axes were about to fall. Here’s her story. 

No matter how many terrible days you have at work, most of us can go in every day secure that if the day does come where there are companywide layoffs, you won’t find out by picking up the morning paper.

Ironically, this is not true if you work in the newspaper business.

Employees of the McClatchy Company, third largest newspaper owner in the U.S., are learning today through the Wall Street Journal, Poynter and other sources that 11 percent of their workforce would be cut today.

Maybe I’m taking this a little personally because I work for one of this company’s papers in the southeast (but only for another four days, bitches! I put in my notice last week) but this shows a complete lack of respect on the part of Gary Pruitt, the company’s chief executive, for the people who have made him his millions.

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’sex & the city’ reader review

Published on June 4, 2008 in Fictional Assistants and Guest Post. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

As promised, here’s a reader submission regarding the portrayal of Louise (Jennifer Hudson), Carrie’s assistant in Sex and the City. The writer is Lisa-Marie from Glasgow, who writes a blog called Last Year’s Girl. NOTE: This post contains spoilers. If you haven’t seen the movie yet, read at your discretion.

I never saw any more than a couple of episodes of Sex and the City during its oh-so-fabulous, early noughties heyday; but perhaps the one defining image it seared into the pop cultural receptor at the front of my brain is of Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw, perched in front of a MacBook as she files that week’s column late into the evening. And so I feel a little bit cheated after watching the big budget continuation of Ms Bradshaw’s tramps and travails through Manhattan – it turns out that, while she has the money to pay for a top of the range laptop and sparkly pink mobile phone, she doesn’t even know how to send a text message. What’s a girl to do but hire an assistant?

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lisa simpson joins the assistant class

Published on May 21, 2008 in Fictional Assistants and Guest Post. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Many thanks to STA friend John of My Reviews for giving me a heads up about a recent episode of The Simpsons where Lisa becomes Krusty’s assistant. Since Lisa was a feminist hero to my eight-year-old self, it makes me happy to hear she’s still kicking butt despite the fact I haven’t seen a new episode of the show in years. John gives us his synopsis:

We wouldn’t blame you if you stopped watching “The Simpsons” 8 years ago, when it had passed its “Planet of the Apes: The Musical” prime and began its decline into 5 minutes of vaguely funny non sequiturs and random Lenny jokes stretched out into 22 minutes of preposterous and tenuous storylines.

Which is to say, you probably missed this week’s episode “All About Lisa”, where, through a series of unlikely events, Krusty hires Lisa to be his (unpaid) assistant, after Lisa informs crusty that The Discovery Channel is run entirely by interns and doesn’t have a single paid employee. [Editor's Note: I'm pretty sure this is true.]

Krusty, true to form, instantly turns into the boss from hell, requiring her assistance when he gets pastrami stuck in her teeth, instructing her to pay attention when he tells Nelson “I’ll trash you in my memoirs” (since she’ll be writing his memoirs), and making loud, ambiguously-phrased, demands that she do all his errands  (“Now go get me my dry-cleaning, which is my code word for ‘Scotch’. And get me my Scotch, which is my code word for ‘my bookie’.  And also, go get my dry cleaning!”)

The good news is that Lisa eventually works her way to the top, rendering her abusive boss obsolete in the process.

My favorite line: “What are you standing around for? I wish I was paying you so I could dock your salary!”

guest post: reviewing gwyneth paltrow in ‘iron man’

Published on May 6, 2008 in Fictional Assistants and Guest Post. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

STA friend John Brooks of My ReViews is a huge superhero fan, so we asked him to report back to us on how Gwyneth Paltrow did playing an assistant in Iron Man. Paltrow plays Virginia “Pepper” Potts, the redheaded Girl Friday to Robert Downey Jr.’s boss Tony Stark.

There are a lot of reasons we love Iron Man (which grossed over a jillion dollars this past weekend): Robert Downey Jr. as millionaire industrialist womanizing player-turned superhero Tony Stark; the amazing effects; the fact that it contains actual, three-dimensional human characters; that awesome superhero suit;  Robert Downey Jr. And call us self-absorbed, but what we love most is the portrayal of Tony’s personal assistant, Pepper Potts. And so let us take this opportunity to bestow mad STA props to the following:-To Gwyneth Paltrow, for not thinking she’s too good to take on an assistant job, even when she is only playing one in an enormously-budgeted Hollywood epic.

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guest column: why you shouldn’t bang your coworkers

Published on August 27, 2007 in Guest Post and Survival Guide. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

Josie Jobless is a friend of STA who knows her way around a nightmare assistant job. Last time she stopped by, she gave tips on how to exploit your beleaguered state. Here’s her latest missive:

It’s always a bad idea to fuck a co-worker. You eat shit or shit where you eat—both unpleasant. But if you’re dumb enough to head down this road it’s best not to pick a random co-worker for this mission. Don’t be like Josie– examine your candidates first.

Sometimes, it can be a profitable venture. As an assistant, if you bed your boss or some suit on the right level, you’ll always have the upper hand. You can never be fired and if you feel yourself getting bored by the job or the lover, a quick phone call to HR and the slightest mention of the phrase “sexual harassment” should get you out of the job with a pretty neat severance package.

If you choose not to fuck a superior, bumping uglies with someone on your level is the safest bet. As a peon, no one really cares how you get your kicks. If you’re dating just the right assistant, you can pool resources and suddenly both seem much better at your jobs. Also, fucking just the right assistant will garner all the juicy gossip your boss craves. Or you can also screw a competing assistant and get some dirt on them and take them down. The only risk of such inter-assistant office courtship is that since no one really cares, no one’s got your back in this mess and if it gets ugly you destroy your work and personal life in one fell swoop.

While messy, dating a fellow associate doesn’t quite ruffle anyone’s feathers. The worst way to sleep around work is to break the unspoken codes. Business is about ethics and procedures, many detailed, the most essential are tacit. Understanding office politics is key to getting ahead and if you ignore them sexually, everyone suffers. Don’t have sex with a vague superior. Don’t have sex with your own competition. And don’t ever bed someone who when you get found out you’re both getting fired.

After looking at these options, today’s lesson may just be that it’s best to keep it in your (black, skintight) pants at the office.