i tried to post all day yesterday and Blogger was not having it.
damn you, Blogger.
anyway, i was talking with Megs last night for a long while and we decided that 1) commiserating about being an "assistant" is hilarious and 2) paying taxes is for losers. since talking about #2 might garner some unwanted interest from the federal government, we shall discuss #1.
it my brief time as a college grad (i graduated in December of 2003), i have had three jobs so far. i worked at a very shady but posh real estate company in Boston for about ten months, a not as shady but very shitty property management company for one month, and now i have been here at the project planning/building company for about four months and i think i have finally found my niche.
for now.
anyway, at the real estate company i worked as a (the only!) administrative assistant, which means i did all the paperwork, placed all the ads, ordered all the supplies and assisted the Prez and VPs. now, assisting a higher-up always entails way more BS than your usual administrative tasks. it also usually involves taking care of the Prez or VP's personal business.
this is something that i hate.
if you are the president of a real estate company, then you are wealthy, and if you are wealthy, then you can afford to hire a personal assistant. I don't get paid enough to organize the contacts in your Blackberry or to search for the perfect teak table to go in the foyer in your Back Bay condo, or to find a way to ship your $4,000 sunglasses to San Francisco overnight when there is no overnight delivery to that location. especially when you can't even deign to give me health insurance.
but of course, this is what i did. i liked working on Newbury Street. for a short time i was willing to be someone's b*tch if it meant working in a fancy place at a fancy address...
what can i say, i was naive (and really a big fan of Sonsie and Jasmine Sola)
and when i worked at the property management firm my boss (the president) would frequently have me call around to different, local restaurantsat 4:30PM to try to find a 6PM reservation for 8 people, and then admonish me when 1) this could only happen at the Prudential Food Court, and not the Capital Grille like he wanted and 2) i didn't get my other, more business related work done. and then he would send me to Fed Ex to ship his wife's $900 sandals to New Jersey. but not before she would warn me not to 1) damage them or 2) steal them.
hence, i quit after a month.
now, finally, i am no one's assistant. at least not in a personal sense.
i have work to do, and it does not involve searcing CrateandBarrel.com for the perfect sconce!
the president and the VPs of my company all have their own personal assistants (as it should be), and even if they didn't, they are really not the sort of guys to have a coworker run to the drycleaners for them. i really feel that even if you are the president of a company that you own, you shouldn't have your coworkers who conduct business with you, also paying your personal credit card for you. you can hire an assitant for that and keep everyone happy.
this is just some business advice, from me to you. and always remember: the Devil doesn't just wear Prada...he wears Philippe Starck sunglasses too.
Thursday, March 31, 2005
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10 comments:
Wow, I also wrote about this previously. I am currently in a job where I continuously have to do personal CRAP for my boss. I was hired as a graphic designer yet I find myself moving the boss's personal belongings, doing real estate research and doing inventory on his hurricane damaged items. Patience is running low I tell you!
Wow, I also wrote about this previously. I am currently in a job where I continuously have to do personal CRAP for my boss. I was hired as a graphic designer yet I find myself moving the boss's personal belongings, doing real estate research and doing inventory on his hurricane damaged items. Patience is running low I tell you!
the idea of being someone's personal assistant has never appealed to me, and it appealed to me even less when a good friend of mine took on such a job. i mean, i'm the worker who gets along with absolutely everybody around the office, but i have NO interest in what goes on in peoples' lives outside of the workplace. ugh. if i did, i'd be a private investigator or something...
Yeah...word.
I am an administrative assistant as well, and I can't IMAGINE anyone here asking me to do their personal stuff for them. How unprofessional. I deal with contracts and projects....not contacts and finding you a Botox clinic.
-Samantha-
Finding the right boss is really the key. I was an assistant for over a year for this woman who totally used and abused me- but it totally taught me how to treat an assistant now.
oh my god, I have done everything for my boss from the purchasing of coffee to the purchasing of his refrigerator. My title may be co-producer, but my job description is "bitch".
I don't understand. When I DO have an assistant available, I want her spending all her time setting appointments, making calls, and getting cards out. The LAST thing I want her doing is running around getting coffee or anything else along a personal line. WHY would someone want to waste so valuable a resource?
-G
Oh my god...I thought I was the only one that couldn't get blogger to work. I can't get the HTML hot links to work either.
As for being a personal assistant, I was a personal assistant at my first law firm, where I was actually a lawyer. I spent more time getting coffee for the partners, picking their kids up from daycare, and dealing with their drycleaning than I did with my clients. I quit that one pretty soon.
Oooooh, worse is being a TEMP assistant. I recently walked out of a place where the exec assistant told me, 'if we pay you a wage, you do what you're told'. They no longer pay me a wage. They already had me loading a dishwasher with their nasty used cups, and picking up cakes, and DRIVING to the fed ex drop off box b/c they were too cheap to have it picked up. The hardest part of working is learning to say no without getting fired.
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