As the 2006 movie The Devil Wears Prada (where Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep give an intense insight into the assistant/boss relationship) hits London’s West End stage, a Harper’s Bazaar article dived into what it’s really like to work for high-profile execs. Here are some of our favourite bits…
Even professional organisers slip up
“It was early summer 2015, and I had been working as the assistant to the editor-in-chief of Harper’s Bazaar for no more than six months,” says Teresa. “My main role as the editor’s assistant was to handle her diary – and I had managed to double book her with Her Majesty the Queen!” By the skin of her teeth, Teresa avoided losing her job and fixed a new date with the Queen’s very patient private secretary. Phew!
Discretion is key
Heather, who assisted a partner at a leading entertainment agency in LA, had to listen in to every phone call her boss took. “Some people treated calls like a therapy session,” she says. “I would hear about actors who couldn’t get out of bed because they were on so many drugs. I’ve had someone say they were HIV-positive.” She even knew that one of the world’s most famous singers had suffered a miscarriage before anyone knew that she was even trying to get pregnant. What a load to bear…
An EA makes the best-sounding board
“The best piece of advice I used to give new employees was ‘be nice to me and I can make your life a dream but if you p*ss me off, I can make things very difficult,’” said Rebecca, a former executive assistant at a major global investment bank. She worked for a senior partner for more than a decade and admits she took ‘great joy’ in cancelling personal meetings between underlings and the big boss, or being honest to those in charge about who was behaving badly in the office. She continues: “My boss loved that about me. He always valued my opinion of people.” Even when the partner was asked to advise Parliament on finance matters, he would use Rebecca as his sounding board. “It was quite surreal,” she says. “I was his confidante, even when it concerned subjects as big as government policies.”
Be prepared, but expect the unexpected
Heather, the PA who listened in on phone calls, laughs about the time when her job involved counting out exactly 12 almonds for an executive’s breakfast every morning. She also remembers ducking when staplers went flying across the office in rage and picking up children from school when her boss was too drunk to do it.
EA come fashion advisor
An assistant to a senior banking exec noticed his boss was acting strangely during a meeting. “She was scratching at her back and kind of looking down the front of her blouse and wobbling and shaking her shoulders. When he asked her what was wrong, she said: ‘I forgot to put a bra on this morning. You’re going to have to go and buy me one.’ I had never bought, or worn or interacted with a bra, so I didn’t really know what to do,” he explains. His boss, meanwhile, couldn’t remember what size she was and instructed him to call her nanny to find out. He went into a shop and, overwhelmed by the choices, eventually picked one that matched the dress she was wearing. “That was a real career low for me,” he adds.
