 |
 |
 |
|
Posted on March 10, 2003
Corporate Executive Assistant
This was submitted by a woman who has built a career propping-up manic Fortune 100 executives. Travel! Glamour! Moronic bosses! -- JB
I’m a career Executive Assistant. After graduating secretarial school, I had a thought about climbing the ladder, starting out as a Personnel Assistant and going to college at night – found out after hiring many Executive Assistants, who would make much more money than me, to go back to my initial plan. Also, being a Libra, I found it most challenging to make quick or big decisions, always trying to weigh the facts and end up being very frustrated so, I went back to my first instinct and love of secretarial work. I found the perfect career working for a few bosses who taught me a lot, had dignity, manners and great opportunities.
The best thing about my work is not having to make the big decisions but having the challenge to simply “make it happen’. Also the sheer comedy of it all. The worst thing about my job is never having enough hours in the day, for example I have been so busy working and relocating for work the last 20 years, I actually forgot to get married and have kids. (Almost true – fate, destiny and choice had a lot to do with it too.)
In five years I see myself winding down my career, retiring, building my cabin in the sky and writing my memoirs.
Most recently I relocated back to Manhattan for a completely different type of boss – one I swore I would never work for. He's a lawyer and very affluent owner of an investment bank. This was just after the disaster on 9/11 and there weren’t many job offers coming my way. My interview went well, he seemed nice enough, I was more than qualified to do the job and the Madison Avenue offices were gorgeous.
However, his socialite wife also had an office there and I was to offer support to her and her assistant as well. The first thing I had to do was find her yet another assistant – this woman goes thru secretaries like most go through paper plates. After interviewing 70 secretaries and referring 57 to her, she finally chose one.
“Mrs.” is a very ambitious socialite. Once a prestigious fashion magazine ran an unflattering profile of her. She was pissed. When the mag first hit stands, one socially-minded type tried to get a copy at the popular State News at 72nd Street and Third Avenue, but was informed that a "tall blonde with a car and driver" had already bought them all. When the buyer asked if more copies were coming in, the clerk said the same woman had already bought them all up in advance. The Boss' wife had driven all over the Upper East Side, cleaning out newsstands.
In the meantime, I discover that the Boss has only two modes of talking: 1) mumbles or 2) bellows ... and it’s never about any thing I have to do. One day I hear a crash in his office – I peek inside and see his desk drawer across the room on the floor with the contents everywhere. I wasn’t about to question this because he would yell at me. After an hour, he comes out of his office, drawer in hand and plops it on my desk asking me to please organize the drawer so he can find his pens more easily.
Selling his unwanted golf clubs on EBay was no picnic., either
One time, while living and working in Europe, a former boss had to go to Asia for a big business deal. The red tape involved getting visas for an American while living in Europe was so complicated but after 3 weeks of constant work I was able to get the proper paperwork done. So many consulates had to be contacted and finally his passport was all stamped and ready to go. This process was so tedious that I made a copy of everything for my “CMA” file (Cover My Arse). Well a couple of days before trip time, I asked the boss to bring in his passport one last time for me to check. He went home and looked and looked and couldn’t find it.
It turns out that his two year-old son had gotten into a new game of burying things in his sandbox. On top of that, they had a mole problem in their backyard. There must have been a hundred little mounds of dirt back there. Well, the boss realizes his son’s latest gig and goes out to the sandbox to see if his passport was there. And it wasn’t. He questioned his son, and the boy said he didn’t bury the passport. So the boss starts thinking about the mole hills.
Of course I get an angry call a few hours later. Now, I've got 2 days to get a new passport, all those visas, which took me weeks of cajoling bureaucrats the first time. Thanks to the CMA file and together with having my assistant flying to other cities to gather the paperwork, we got it all together just in time for his trip.
These are a couple of examples of life in the high-powered fast lane for me..
| | | | |
