Heather here with another horror story. I can so relate to this. What is it about executives that they always want to go to the place where you can’t get a reservation, at the time all the tables are full, tomorrow?
My company is based in London. Sometimes the big shots come over and I have to assist them on top of everyone else I do everything for. I am sure you can imagine what a delight this is. They can’t ever just ask for simple things like lunch reservations at Bobby Van’s. It is always something crazy like a helicopter at a time when there are no helicopters going where they want to go. Of course they think this is the simplest task in the world.
One day I got a call from an assistant in London looking for help with a dinner reservation. She said the phone number didn’t work and she thought she might be dialing it wrong because it just rang and rang. I said, “Sure, I can call them no problem.” HA. It turned out to be a huge pain in my ass.
I called the restaurant multiple times and it rang and rang. I decided to google it because she must have had the number wrong. Why on earth would The Waverly Inn not have a working phone? I had no idea that this was the most exclusive restaurant in New York, owned by Graydon Carter, the Editor-in-Chief of Vanity Fair. It was part of their “charm” to only get reservations if you knew someone or had the rumored secret reservation line.
I emailed the London assistant to let her know the situation in hopes that she would help me out with this ridiculous task. I had no luck. I did everything I could think of to try and get a reservation. I asked all the people in the office if they knew anyone who could get us a reservation or if they knew the secret number. They just laughed at me and said good luck. I asked all my friends with the same results. After more research I found that you might be able to get a reservation for a month in advance if you actually went to the restaurant. I didn’t have that much time but I figured it was worth a try. Their entrance is hidden too, of course, but I made plans to go down there myself and beg if I had to.
I informed Big Shot and his assistant of my plan and let them know I couldn’t make any guarantees. Just before I left the office I got an email from Big Shot saying he would do it himself. Of course, only after I had spent an entire week trying to solve this problem he would decide to do it himself.
I should have known that “doing it himself” meant calling one of his big shot friends and getting his assistant to do it for him. This assistant worked for a company that was a client of Vanity Fair had the secret rumored reservation number so she only had to pick up the phone and place the reservation. No pain involved. I decided to be happy it was done and I didn’t have to deal with it anymore.
The day after his dinner Big Shot asked me to send flowers to the assistant who got him the reservation. I couldn’t believe after all my hard work and determination, when his own assistant gave up that, he would not only send flowers to someone else but make me do it. How’s that for a smack in the face?
- Submitted by Ann
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’
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
It was a Sunday afternoon. Both of my roommates were gone. I was at home alone watching football and getting stoned. Maybe not the mark of an overachieving assistant but a habitual practice I found necessary at the time to cope with the new found levels of stress brought on by my new boss most people described as “A mad Genius”. Sunday became my only day off as I found working a 4-6 hour Saturday to be my only way to stay on top of the unnecessary amount of filing my boss would leave behind because he refused to use his computer to store anything. We kept paper files on everything, which meant every email was printed and filed. Every cocktail napkin with a number or a note, filed. Every post it, paper scrap, scratched on legal pad, greasy cheese steak delivery bag, and candy wrapper with his handwriting, filed. I had assembled a small group of floating assistants to help with the filing but even explaining to them that a napkin was considered an important document became a redundant use of my time. So, Sunday? Sunday was my day. Assistants’ key cards did not allow access to the building on Sundays so even though I often wanted to use my 7th day to create more hours in the week I was not allowed. So Sundays I often got high, very high, watched football, ordered Chinese food, and napped on the couch while doing coverage on scripts no one would ever read. I was in the midst of my normal Sunday ritual when my phone rang and it was my boss’s number. (just a note: I never programmed my boss’s number in my phone just in case I pocket dialed him while explaining to a friend what a complete douchebag I was working for. I did, however, have his number memorized.)
Continue reading ‘horror story epic: the stealth assistant’
I work for a big media conglomerate in New York. Ever since my boss put her cat down, I get the feeling she’s trying to euthanize my career.
A higher profile author and her agent came in for a series of meetings. In between two meetings, everyone was congregating in my boss’s office to chat. Our operations director (who has a reputation for being a nightmare herself…) came by to ask me a work-related question. During our conversation, my boss holds up her hand to interrupt.
“Sorry to interrupt. I need your company ID card for about ten minutes.”
This request confounds me. Does the agent need it to enter the building? Why can’t my boss use her own? Has she lost it?
“Don’t worry,” she reassures me, “It’s not for anything illegal.”
Continue reading ‘horror story: identity theft’
Publishing assistants don’t have it easy. Just ask this person. Or this person. Or the poor hapless assistant helping to promote some book called Tan Lines by some author named J.J. Salem. The book is being marketed as the ultimate “fun, sexy, beach read” and someone got the brilliant idea to send the assistant into Madison Square Park in New York and accost passerby, imploring them to be videotaped reading the book’s opening sentence aloud for a promotional video. That sentence, of course, is:
There are 8,000 nerve endings in the clitoris and this son of a bitch couldn’t find one of them.
You know this poor girl probably has an undergrad degree, if not a grad degree, from a respectable school. And she’s getting paid like 28K a year for a job that involves having to accost strangers. I mean, at that point, why not just hand out coupons for the new sandwich place that just opened across the block? It probably pays better. And you’d get free sandwiches instead of just some dumb book.
I work at a publishing company. A paperback edition of this book we did that won a Pulitzer was about to come out, and even though basically anyone at our company can get a copy of any of our books that they want, the paperbacks of this book were on lockdown. One of my best work friends is an assistant in the PR department, and she managed to sneak me a copy because she knows the writer is my favorite author. She left it on my desk while I was at lunch with a little note attached to it. I never saw the book. When I got back from lunch my (male) boss handed me a gift bag with tissue paper and bows on it and ordered me to have it messengered to his girlfriend. It turns out he’d seen the book on my desk and decided she would like it and wrapped it up before I could take it for myself! I didn’t realize what had happened until my friend in PR asked me what I thought of the book and then the next day the boss’ girlfriend sent an email gushing about how much she liked the book. I guess I should have thought it was weird that he wrapped something himself instead of making me do it. How fucked up is it when a boss has to steal from an assistant?
–Submitted by “Trixie,” New York City
Recently fired Star Editor in Chief Bonnie Fuller is not going to have many coworkers crying when they see her walk away. An insider had some BF horror stories to tell Gawker:
Having a clothing allowance: Normal. Not being able to find the right bra for an event, even after having your fashion editor call in numerous freebies, driving her to hand over the still-warm bra off her back: Not normal. (Fuller denies this, claiming, “I’m not a big clothes sharer.”) Asking an editorial assistant to do a certain number of personal errands, like picking up the dry cleaning or wrapping presents: Normal. Purportedly asking assistant to wash out your breast pump: Not normal! (Fuller does not recall asking anyone to do this. “Could one of my assistants, being thoughtful, have done it? I don’t know. I’m oblivious.”)
Bonnie was such a bad boss, there’s an entire website devoted to hating her. If the anonymous source who started the site ever wants to tell more horror stories, we happen to know a blog that might be interested.
[Side note: Bonnie, the correct answer to the question posed on the cover of your magazine, "Did Tom leave Penelope for Nicole?" is "No."]
First thing one morning I am called to ”Employee X”’s department to view something on the floor in her kitchenette. End result is on the floor in front of the sink is a LARGE pair of damp panties. Now as Health/Safety/Security person I am ultimately the one to deal with this along with our boss. She had spent the night (AGAIN) and was a no show in the AM. She called and left a message on the answering machine that she had to go to the doctor and would be in at 1.
Now this isn’t the first time she “worked late” and then didn’t come to work but it is the first time she has left underwear on the floor. I am now forced to go to the Security office to view video from 4 cmaeras to make sure no one else was on the floor at 3 Am and that she wasn’t attacked or anything horrible. Also not the first time she has caused more work for others by her actions. Her staff is freaking out wondering why there is wet underwear on the floor and are they safe and can they sit in their chairs or are they dirty etc. After repeated phone messages to her she finally calls in and tells the big boss’ assistant that she was “working late” and had “an accident” and had to change her underwear and she would appreciate if it was never brought up again.
He accepts this as perfectly normal until I mention that removing one’s underwear in an area where food is heated and washing them in the sink isn’t a great thing and now we have to worry about urine on her chair and on the carpet. Her staff is really freaking out. She always stays until 2 or 3 or 4 in the morning going through computers and desks while sitting in their chairs. No one wants to sit down now with good reason. Best part is our big boss gets mad and yells at me for bringing up the concerns and questioning why she is in the building at 3 AM peeing in her chair and getting naked in the kitchen.
His assistant had to sit down with her and ask the detailed questions of where she was sitting when she had her “accident” do we need to have the chairs cleaned, the carpet cleaned, why was she taking clothes off in the kitchen and not using the gym facility downstairs etc. She became offended that the questions were asked she she was working so hard at night. Never mind the computer files were never accessed and the volume of backlogged work never decreased.–Submitted By “A”
Ricki Lake, who you may remember from the original Hairspray movie (before it was a Broadway musical, or a movie based on the musical) and the annoying ’90s talk show, has a film premiering at the Tribeca Film Festival this week. It’s a documentary called The Business of Being Born. The film is about women choosing to give birth in places other than hospitals, and includes footage of Lake giving birth to her son Owen in a bathtub in her apartment. This item from New York Magazine’s Daily Intelligencer quotes Lake talking about her film:
Still, “to this day,” says Lake, “my assistant talks about how she had to clean up my bathtub afterward.”
Um, dude, for real? We’ve heard about assistants doing everything from going on protein bar hunts to tracking down a skinnier cell phone, but cleaning up someone’s afterbirth? No fucking way.