Adventures in Temping Part II

Reasons I will Never Be A P.A.

Last week I was promoted to the dizzying hights of "personal assistant" for a woman that I slowly discovered was actually a snake:



It took me awhile to work out that she was the embodiment of evil because she had kickarse dress-sense and she seemed so nice most of the time and never yelled at me. She just accused me of opening up the company to the worst shitstorm of libel and recriminations that anyone had ever known and that was fine , I couldn't've possibly be expected to know that but it wasn't like she was going to make any time to talk to me... until after I'd practically doused the office in gasoline and walked back in with a box of matches, apparently. Actually, she wasn't going to talk to me even after all of that because obviously I'd gone too far and it was time to get in someone with just a bit more experience.

Other points that tipped me off to my not-p.a.-compatibility-ness:

• When you are a P.A. you are meant to drop everything to follow someone around whenever they sweep into the office. This means that even if you are in the middle of an awesomely bitchy email with your best friend, you are meant to stop writing and stand up. Fuck that.


• When you are a P.A. you have to make the most extreme and retarded excel spreadsheets I have ever seen (and I've seen a few) and you are meant to love them like a particularly difficult child that you, yourself, have produced. Again I say, fuck that


• When you are a P.A. you have to spend a lot of time photocopying, resizing and binding things for other people. Things that may be poorly written, strangely laid out and not - once you've finished photocopying and binding everything - exactly what the other person had in mind. So you better get back to the stationery room and try again. Fuck that.

There are more but I'm about to be late to being a receptionist again.