Tag Archive for 'Heroes'

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hero of the week: kathy griffin

Not many celebrities are up for sharing the spotlight with their assistant. Kathy Griffin, on the other hand, is no ordinary celebrity as she’s proven recently by not only including her assistant in her reality show, but visiting the girl’s hometown of Tracy, California.

Now, I’m from California and can tell you that Tracy, stand-up town that it might be, is no Beverly Hills. Getting there involves more than 30 minutes in the car, some blah California scenery, and it tends to be a lot warmer or colder there than most people would expect. What I’m saying is that Kathy’s decision requires commitment, and it’s refreshing to see her going out of her way to get to know her assistant, whom she affectionately refers to as Princess Tiffany.

To read more about Kathy Griffin’s trip to the land of Princess Tiffany, click here.

hero of the week: ellen page

ellen page assistantEllen Page is on a roll. Her star turn in the hit indie movie Juno has made her one of the most talked-about young actresses in Hollywood, and she’s even garnering Oscar buzz for playing the wisecracking pregnant teenager. She still lives in her hometown of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and she named her dog after rock goddess Patti Smith. But what do we love most about her? She doesn’t have an assistant.

We’ve said it before, but we’ll say it again: any celebrity we’d be willing to assist is way too cool to have an assistant.

john c. reilly does not need an assistant

We loved John C. Reilly in films like Boogie Nights and Chicago, and now we’re dying to see him in the new Judd Apatow movie Walk Hard. And it turns out that his singing and acting ability isn’t the only reason he’s awesome: he doesn’t have an assistant. Reilly was reportedly embarrassed when he showed up on the Walk Hard set to find that he had a newly-hired assistant waiting. He said, “I’m a very modest person, you know. I hate the term ‘celebrity’ or ‘movie star’. It’s embarrassing. I’m from Chicago, and that’s not what I signed up for. They gave me an assistant on Walk Hard, and I never knew what to do with the guy. I’m used to getting my own coffee.”

John C. Reilly, American Hero. Once again proving our point that if we would actually choose be someone’s assistant, they’re probably too cool to want one.

secretary resigns, tells boss to fuck off

Hell hath no fury like an admin scorned. Take Virginia Grover for example. After dealing with years of system-wide abuse in her job as secretary to the Chief of Police in Kittery, Maine, she finally told off her boss in a resignation letter that then appeared in the local paper. Full text of the letter is below.

Continue reading ’secretary resigns, tells boss to fuck off’

monday morning morale booster: an assistant blows the whistle

-From the Wall Street Journal- 

On a Friday morning last November, Justen Deal, a 22-year-old Kaiser Permanente employee, blasted an email throughout the giant health maintenance organization. His message charged that HealthConnect — the company’s ambitious $4 billion project to convert paper files into electronic medical records — was a mess.

In a blistering 2,000-word treatise, Mr. Deal wrote: “We’re spending recklessly, to the tune of over $1.5 billion in waste every year, primarily on HealthConnect, but also on other inefficient and ineffective information technology projects.” He did not stop there. Mr. Deal cited what he called the “misleadership” of Kaiser Chief Executive George Halvorson and other top managers, who he said were jeopardizing the company’s ability to provide quality care.

“For me, this isn’t just an issue of saving money,” he wrote. “It could very well become an issue of making sure our physicians and nurses have the tools they need to save lives.”

Mr. Deal signed the email. Before sending it, he says, he printed out a copy and handed it to his boss. “She gave me a look like, ‘I think you’re going to be fired,’ ” he recalls.

Sure enough, he did get fired, but he’s also gotten national attention for speaking out against his boss and standing up to the office hierarchy. To read the rest of the story, click here.