Every assistant has a breaking point. For some, it’s the first time they cry in the bathroom. For others, it’s the day their boss gets physically violent. For Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter’s assistant, Jonathan Keller, it may have been the day he had to make one dinner reservation too many. You see, Carter also owns ultrachic New York City restaurant The Waverly Inn, which is notoriously difficult to get into. Keller’s entire job became managing the list at the Waverly. Gawker has the scoop:
Tipsters tell us that Jonathan Kelly, Graydon’s executive assistant and self-proclaimed “Graydon Carter’s Office,” left recently for an editor’s job at Bloomberg/ BusinessWeek. Kelly—who supposedly wrote VF’s Waverly Inn blog, along with doing other editorial work, was considered a “golden boy.” But that didn’t save him from drudgery. According to our tipster, Kelly “was elevated to editing big-time writers but still had to handle the seating assignments for Waverly and Monkey Bar. That’s what drove him out. Despite being an ‘editor,’ he was still Graydon’s bitch 24/7.”
Mazel tov, Jonathan! I hope you’ve moved on to something better. And if you ever want to dish the dirt, you know how to get ahold of us.
Hell hath no fury like an assistant scorned, and Bernie Madoff’s ex-secretary Eleanor Squillari is pissed. She coauthored a 20,000-word piece (!) in this month’s Vanity Fair about what it was like working for the man who ran the biggest Ponzi scheme in U.S. history. Among the highlights:
- The way Madoff handled stress was “by saying something nasty: You look terrible. You’re gaining weight. You’re stupid. I never took anything he said to me personally, because I knew it wasn’t about me, it was about him.”
- Madoff was flirtatious and had a habit of making sexually suggestive remarks: “‘Oh, you know you’re crazy about me,’ he would say to me. Sometimes when he came out of his bathroom, which was diagonal to my desk, he would still be zipping up his pants. If he saw me shaking my head disapprovingly, he would say, ‘Oh, you know it excites you.’ If a pretty young woman came in, he’d say, ‘Do you remember when you used to look like that?’ I’d tell him, ‘Knock it off, Bernie,’ and he’d go, ‘Ah, you still look good.’ Then he’d try to pat me on the ass.”
- Squillari once caught him perusing the escort ads in the back of a magazine, and he frequently visited massage parlors. “Once, I looked in his address book and found, under M, about a dozen phone numbers for his masseuses. ‘If you ever lose your address book and somebody finds it, they’re going to think you’re a pervert,’ I said.”
- In the days after her husband’s arrest, Ruth Madoff called Squillari multiple times and encouraged the secretary to provide her with certain information without notifying the bankruptcy trustees, which Squillari said she couldn’t do. “Instead, I told the F.B.I. what had just happened. I was working for them now, not for Ruth and Bernie Madoff.”
It continues to get awesomer and more fucked up. Squillari has a video on Vanity Fair’s website where she tells more stories. It’s absolutely worth checking out.
Gawker.com is reporting that publishing behemoth Conde Nast (home to Vogue, Vanity Fair, and other illustrious titles) is laying off almost all of their receptionists.
Tipsters tell us that the receptionists—who sit on each floor to greet and announce visitors, receive packages, and answer phones—will have their last day on Friday. Sad! They’re naturally some of the most popular people in the building, being the only ones with a professional obligation to smile at everyone and act civil and useful.
On top of that, this move is probably a part of CEO Charles Townsend’s latest round of company-wide cutbacks, but it can’t be saving Conde that much money—the receptionists are some of the lowest-paid (if not the lowest-paid) people in the whole building.
Sounds like a sad day over at Conde Nast – just last month they tightened the budgets of already-overworked assistants. If you’re one of the laid off receptionists and want to share your story, email me at contact@savetheassistants.com. I wonder why it is that the people who get fired are always the underpaid admins, not the overpaid executives whose bad business decisions got the company in trouble in the first place?
