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Handling Bad Behavior

If I had to say I had any regrets as a personal assistant for 23+ years, it is the fact that I put up with people behaving badly and made them think it was okay, condoning it by acceptance. When I say bad behavior, it is frankly, a understatement to the 10th degree! Now that I am older and more experienced, and definitely, more confident in my position, I will not tolerate anyone disrespecting me.

Now let’s face it, you won’t have a job for very long if you make your employer wrong, humiliated, or if they think you have nothing but distain for them. But how do you do your job when you do? After all, not every day is going to be easy.

What I found is when I look at all the circumstances of what made them react there is usually some fear behind their reaction or behavior—fear from not knowing what they think they should, fear that they won’t be respected if they don’t seem to be in control, fear of leprauchauns…who knows? All I know is I could usually see a pattern in why they got upset and how they handled it. And while I didn’t feel sorry for them, I also learned to distance myself from the outcome, not being personally affected emotionally. I found the best way to handle an outburst was dead silence. By remaining silent until the tirade is over, I don’t condone, don’t outwardly disagree, I just observe. And you know what? It is like a child who’s tantrums no longer get a reaction. There is no fun in it. And I no longer felt like a participant in their bad behavior. By not reacting I could live with myself and yes, they may want to find someone else who reacts in the manner they are seeking.

So make sure you set your boundaries early on in a job. What applies best is the old saying, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. I apply that to bad behavior. The first time your boundaries are challenged, the monster has raised its ugly head and now you know what you’re up against. Now you can make a decision on how you want to handle it should it happen again. When things calm down you can have the conversation about what happened and how you were made to feel uncomfortable or disrespected. Maybe it can be a productive conversation? At the very least, they have been warned, right? So now, when it happens again, you have to enforce your decision, whatever that is. And no one will be surprised when you leave since you were clear on your boundaries.

You see, jobs will come and go but me, myself and I are together for the long haul.

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Don’t Reinvent the Wheel

Okay, at the risk of sounding like my father, I hope you sincerely heed this warning—don’t reinvent the wheel. So many personal assistants are afraid to ask questions because they don’t want everyone to be aware they don’t know something, after all, our employers come to us for solutions. But it is so much better to let them know, “I don’t know but I will find out and get back to you asap,” than to pretend or worst yet, to lie. You will paint yourself into a corner and lose credibility doing either. People respect that you can “man up” to not knowing and that you are resourceful enough to find out. Say this with me, “I can’t know everything but I know how to find out.”


This is where your contacts, friends, co-workers and vendors serve as valuable support. After all, it is rare that you are encountering a situation that hasn’t been dealt with before. Don’t start from scratch. There are ways to get the information and remain confidential.

For example, a client of mine was going to be shooting a movie out of town and we were trying to keep the location as confidential as possible of where the family would be living and there was a lot of buzz about it already in the press. But I really needed to find out where to source items for the home in this area before arriving. Rather than hunker down on the computer and research blindly, here are just some of my options that I used:

  1. Asked other assistants who traveled to this area who understood confidentiality
  2. Asked the scouts in the production office for help
  3. Called the concierge at a high-end hotel in the area (or the nicest hotel in the area) and asked for references for the items I needed. They are used to like clientele and understand the level of quality I was looking for.
  4. Called the Chamber of Commerce in that area and got more information to see if it is consistent with other recommendations

Any of these options did not expose my client or situation and saved me the hours of research and gave me the confidence I needed to give my clients the information  they needed.

And as always, my rule is if you get the same information/recommendation from two or more trusted resources, that is usually your answer.

Enjoy the hunt!

 

 

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This Too Shall Pass

The personal assistant’s job while challenging and rewarding at times also puts you first on the firing line.  Too often we do 1,000 things right only to be crushed for that 1 thing that goes wrong. I know I am my own worst prosecutor.

One little coping mechanism I have for when things go horribly wrong and I am beating myself up is my point of view cam. I picture myself in my home dealing with whatever problem, tragedy or issue that I think is beyond me. In my mind, I pan out to the bigger surrounding of my home (similar to Google’s “birds eye view”) of my neighborhood, then the city, state, continent, from the moon, from our solar system, and beyond. And myself, which has now become an infinitesimal dot, makes me realize it’s not that bad in the grand overall scheme of things.  I have also learned that whatever issue that is bothering me right now will not be 1 year from now. It puts things in perspective for me. I do my best to get the lesson in the experience and then I do an even better job of telling myself to “gettova it!”

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Systems to Keep You Sane

Let’s face it, being a personal assistant is not for the weak of heart or the thin-skinned or the meek. With some employers you may need to appear the calm, quiet, efficient, working machine but in reality you must be in full control and three steps ahead of every situation no matter how quickly curve balls are being hurled at you. And as humans we will and do make mistakes. It’s how you handle them that will determine if you keep your job or not.

My best advice to any assistant is although you can switch gears in a nano-second and focus on the latest task at hand, you must be as consistent as possible with your procedures and systems. This will save you restless nights wondering if you remembered to do something or not.

For example, at one client’s home we didn’t have enough parking spaces and would routinely move cars around. If you needed to move a car, you would find the keys on a rack by the door and return it there immediately after. One of the employees woke up one night realizing she did not put our employer’s Porsche keys back on the hook. Of course, this was the car her employer was going to drive the following morning to his appointment in Santa Monica, a beautiful drive from his Malibu home. We all knew how he loved to take this car, top down, on beachside drives. Can you blame him?

Had the employee just followed the procedure of hanging the keys on the rack, she could’ve rested easy. But she deviated from procedure because as she pulled into the garage she was called outside to discuss a problem with the gardener and easily got distracted and put the keys in her pocket so she could write down a note. If you are distracted and are given other priorities at the moment, jot down a note “keys” so that there is a reminder to finish your task. Then before you leave to go home, check over your notes. If you wake up worrying if you did something or not, you can rest assured you did it because there is a procedure in place and you are confident you would’ve followed it.

This brings me, in a rather roundabout manner, to my most important system as a personal assistant…NEVER be without pen and paper. I keep a journal like book with me at all times. I date it on the front of when I start a new book and when I finish with that book I write down the end date. Everything I am asked to do, or things I know I need to do, go into that book, dated and crossed off when the task is complete. I write it all down, even if I am taking the most cryptic of notes. (They will make sense to you later when you can add all the details of the topic discussed.) Never ever be without a pen and paper! Oh, and did I mention, never be without pen and paper?

I have systems for everything and will discuss them in later blogs. But whatever your systems are, they are useless unless you adhere to them.

So while some would argue that there are worst things than driving down Pacific Coast Highway with the sprawling blue ocean on one side and the majestic hills on the other, most will agree that the experience loses something when jolted from sleep and your warm bed to rush out and deliver keys 15 miles away at five a.m.—ask my friend.

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Do you have what it takes?

In the book, “Fame Junkies, the Hidden Truth Behind America’s Favorite Addiction,” author Tom Halper and other academics interviewed 650 teenagers from Rochester, NY about our celebrity culture.

He writes, “Forget being President of Harvard – Make me a Celebrity Personal Assistant…
Another question asked: “When you grow up, which of the following jobs would you most like to have?” There were five options to chose from and, among girls, the results were as follows: 9.5% chose “the chief of a major company like General Motors”; 9.8% chose “a Navy Seal”; 13.6% chose “a United States Senator”; 23.7% chose “the president of a great university like Harvard or Yale”; and 43.4% chose “the personal assistant to a very famous singer or movie star.” 
”

Well knock me over with a whisper. Clearly the job has been far over glamorized!  With jet-setting and enjoying all the benefits of this wonderful life, many forget the purpose for a personal assistant to be along on these “outings,” is to work behind the scenes.

Time for a reality check to see if you’ve got what it takes. Here are the my top 5 must-haves:

1) Thick Skin—And I mean space shuttle reinforced carbon fibrous refractory composite tile ceramics outer coating…If you get caught up in thinking if something was intended to be a mind game, it was. Move on.

2) Flexibility—Just know whatever the plan is, it’s going to change, more times than you can imagine.

3) Intelligence—If you think like Houdini, this job is for you.

4) Resourcefulness—Just know the answer is NEVER “No, that can’t be done.” Immediate fail.

5) Student Mentality—Make it your job to be confident but willing to learn. If you think you’ve mastered it, life will show you yet another way. Use it and commit it to your arsenal.

Now this is not to make you think it isn’t doable, it is just not for the aspiring actor or scriptwriter who thinks their boss is Mr. Miyagi in the Karate Kid willing to tutor you along your path to personal stardom. The real movers and shakers in this world expect you to be one too. In fact, the personal assistant that’s got what it takes enjoys a good challenge and isn’t scared of failure because they know how to re-group quickly. And they definitely do not have time for the limelight.

The top PA will always be professional, resourceful, intelligent, can think on their feet and doesn’t get dizzy because things are always moving, shaking and spinning.  It’s your job to keep them in a controlled spin.