Tag Archive for 'Holidays'

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admins’ day linkage

Published on April 21, 2009 in Holidays. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

Administrative Professionals’ Day is tomorrow! My lips are sealed, but I promise some cool things for tomorrow. However, because a day is not enough to praise assistants for all they do, the whole week is now Administrative Professionals’ Week. Here are a couple of links you should check out as you prep for the big day:

horror story: not a shoe-in

Published on March 18, 2009 in Horror Stories. 0 Comments Tags: , .

I’ll never forget this woman at my company’s Christmas party a couple years ago. OMG she was a hoot. She got drunk at the bar before the party even started and then made her rounds of the room, insulted the man who was going to be her boss and just went on and on. That was the last party we had where the company provided entertainment, a band, dancing, etc. and a free hotel room for the night. After that all they did was take us out for dinner.

the last we saw of her was her husband tossing her over his shoulder to carry her out and that Monday we came to work and her shoe was sitting on her desk waiting for her. We didn’t know why the shoe was there but learned afterwards that the woman she reported to directly had placed it there and when the girl showed up for work she fired her. She didn’t even get to work there for one solid day.

–Submitted by Rina, New York City

st. offensive’s day

Published on March 17, 2009 in Holidays and Horror Stories. 0 Comments Tags: , .

This horror story is very appropriate for St. Patrick’s Day. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some green beer to drink in order to wash the bad taste of this story out of my mouth.

One day I was driving my boss to yoga and he some how brought up the fact that my last name is Irish (along with being Irish, I’m English. Czech, French, German, etc.) and he starts sort of awkwardly with “Well, so, you know. I am Jewish and you know how like Jewish people like to feed people and eat a lot, do you and your family, like you know, being Irish, do they drink a lot?”
What the Fuck.
–Submitted by Laura, Philadelphia

new holiday: insult your boss day

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

my boss sucksWednesday is Hump Day, the sign you’ve slogged through half of the week. But this Wednesday, July 23, is also Insult Your Boss Day. MIT lecturer A.C. Kemp invented the holiday as a way to let workers vent about their boss-related frustrations. (Wouldn’t it be awesome if there was some website where you could do that all year?)

If for some reason insults related to your boss don’t flow quickly and easily, Insult Your Boss Day’s official website has some helpful snark tips. However, as an STA reader, I sincerely doubt you need any assistance. Frankly, around here every day is Insult Your Boss Day. That said, it’s about time somebody made up a fake holiday I could really get behind. I mean, at least this one has a goal other than selling Hallmark cards or making single people feel like shit for not having a Valentine.

independence day for assistants

Published on July 4, 2008 in Holidays. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Happy Fourth of July, everyone!

Most of us make New Year’s resolutions. But one year my friends and I started a tradition that I still keep up–every Fourth of July, we have to answer the question, “What do you want to be independent from this year?”

If, for you, the answer is “my job,” I challenge you to devote part of your long weekend to thinking about exactly how you’re going to become independent from it. Make a couple of really attainable, practical goals–”I will send out at least five resumes a week” or “I will follow up with every person I meet at a networking event.” Because it’s one thing to hate your job, but it’s another thing to do something about it.

When Ashley and I first started STA, we concieved it as simply a place to share horror stories like the ones we enjoyed swapping with our friends at postwork cocktails. However, it didn’t take long for that idea to get old. As much fun as it is to rant about your job, we realized that the true aim of the site should be to help people get out of those horror-story-inducing jobs. I actually made one of my work-independence goals to “spend as much time trying to find a new job as I do complaining about my current one,” and now I don’t work at The Evil Empire anymore.

So, this Independence Day, add a little something extra to your menu of fireworks, beer, and hot dogs. And then write in, and let us know how you’re doing.

get your bike out of storage

Published on May 14, 2008 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

May is National Bike to Work Month, and this week is Bike to Work Week. Why should you bike to work? Well, considering the ever-rising price of gas, biking to work will definitely save you some cash. It’s also a nice way to get some exercise to counteract the fact that you sit at a desk all day, enjoy some nice spring weather, and also do your part to cut down on fuel emissions that contribute to global warming. Everybody wins.

Another alternative: carpool with a friend in the morning and bring your bike with you, then bike home that night. If you have kind of a long commute and don’t want to wear yourself out, riding one way might be a better idea.

Several towns, including NYC, Indianapolis, and Spokane, are organizing group rides throughout the month. Check your local paper or The League of American Bicyclists for more info.

horror stories from the staff of the l.a. downtown news

Published on April 23, 2008 in Horror Stories. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Happy Administrative Professionals Day! We hope that your employers are celebrating this holiest of holidays, and that they had enough tact not to get you a “Happy Secretary’s Day” card. The staff of the L.A. Downtown News chipped in with some horror stories of their own. It just goes to show you that no one ever gets over the pain and horror of their first assistant job. Here’s one of our faves, from staff writer Anna Scott:

When D (names and details have been changed to protect the unsuspecting) hired me as his assistant, I was not long out of college, quickly going broke as a writer for Valley Scene Magazine. A gig assisting a sometime screenwriter-director-producer with a stake in his family’s widget production business seemed like just the thing to tide me over to greener pastures.

A year later, I was up to my ears in widgets. I spent my days filing widget-related documents, juggling phone messages from widget dealers, fetching widget-making supplies from Office Depot. This was not something I excelled at. I am a slob and a packrat, not a person anybody should trust to simplify his life.

D should have fired me. However, being the very nice man he was, one day he plopped two big, hardcover books down on my paper-strewn desk: The Administrative Assistant’s and Secretary’s Handbook and Merriam-Webster’s Secretarial Handbook (Third Edition).

Continue reading ‘horror stories from the staff of the l.a. downtown news’

passover and assistants

Published on April 18, 2008 in Holidays and Manifestos. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

The Jewish holiday of Passover starts this weekend. There are two reasons I am mentioning this.

1. It means that all of next week I will not be eating anything leaven, which means bread, rice, pasta, beer (beer!), and the like. Because carbs make up an abnormally high percentage of my favorite foods, I am going to be a very grumpy Lilit. I can’t even have croutons in my salad. It’s killing me. Please excuse any posts that sound a little snippy. I really do love carbohydrates, y’all.

2. Passover is a holiday commemorating the Exodus–when the Jews, who were slaves, were freed from their bondage in Egypt. Maybe it’s a stretch, but the Exodus story is at the core of what Save the Assistants represents. There’s a line in the Passover prayers: “Because we were once slaves, and now we are free, may we help all who are slaves to become free.” I was once an office slave, and now I am free. My job is to run this site and help other office slaves who want to become free. That is the job of all of us who were in terrible situations and got out–we owe an obligation to help other assistants, to be nice to that new girl in the office even though she’s really annoying, to bail out the temp who can’t figure out how to use the copier, to help your brother write his first resume.

So happy Passover to all of you who are celebrating, and a great weekend to those of you who are not.

tomorrow is “stress awareness day”

Published on April 15, 2008 in Uncategorized. 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .

Of all the press releases that come across the STA desk, this is one of the more hilarious ones: a sheet informing me that April is National Stress Awareness Month. Funny, because I thought every month was national stress awareness month. If you’re an assistant, every freaking day is an entire stress awareness month. Of course, we’re aware of stress. What would be better for these well-intentioned folks at the health department is, say, National Stress Relief Month. Or, like, National Stop Being a Douche to Your Assistant Because It Actually Affects Their Health Month.

That said, tomorrow, April 16, is National Stress Awareness Day. Because a whole month is too much for some people. To be fair, it is the day after tax day, which means a lot of you will be coming down from a major stressor. So, try to spend some time tomorrow doing something that makes you less stressed, whether it’s at work or at home. I’m a big fan of unwinding in a hot bath, personally, but you can grab cocktails with a friend you don’t get to see often enough, rent a movie you’ve been wanting to see for ages, stock up on your favorite junk food, or whatever else makes you happy. Or hell…just call in sick. We won’t tell.

screw the assistants, save the bosses

Published on April 1, 2008 in Holidays. 0 Comments Tags: , .

Ashley here. Lilit and I have to come clean about something, and as much as it’s going to be painful and probably rock worlds in bad ways, it just needs to be done.

For the past several months, Lilit and I have been relying on an intern. An unpaid intern. We realize this might sound hypocritical, but we both have full-time jobs and we have lives. We don’t have time anymore to stay online until the wee hours of the night, especially because we both have boyfriends, too, and it gets harder and harder to explain to them a) what we’re doing, and b) what a blog is (they’re hot, but dim).

Anyway, the thing is that we’ve had a string of unpaid interns – three interns over five months – so we’re starting to worry that we’ve become bad bosses somehow. Lilit can be a massive bitch, with her taskmistress ways, and I think my sarcasm probably doesn’t translate well over email (which is fine, because usually my sarcasm is actually masking some kind of hypercritical, passive aggressive attitude).

We’re writing this posting because our latest intern, Britney, didn’t show up for work last night. She said she didn’t mind the graveyard shift, and was happy enough with the coffee and croutons we paid her in – “I just want to be part of the revolution,” is what she told us. Apparently after a week, she couldn’t hang.

So, STA readers, is it us? Are we the culprits here, or are we just unfortunate enough to find the laziest, least motivated unpaid interns out there?

Help us help ourselves.

Thanks,

Ashley & Lilit