Here’s a shameful secret about me: Although I have achieved a certain amount of success in my life, I do not have a personal assistant.
I have life skills, is what I’m saying. I can work my phone, I can use Google Maps, I can unwrap my own sandwich — I’m a functioning, reasonably organized adult who makes his uncertain way in the world unassisted. Why do I need help with that?
Many of the people I interact with on a professional level, though, have a different point of view.
I got an email from someone’s assistant a week or so ago asking for my most up-to-date contact information. The assistant’s boss is a big-time character in show business, but I guess I didn’t realize how big until I saw the assistant’s email address, which was the boss’s name with four letters attached to it — “Asst” — and then the number three, and then @ the company domain.
But here’s what jumped out at me: “Asst3.” Assistant Three, in other words. Meaning the boss definitely has an Asst1 and an Asst2, and who knows, maybe an Asst4 and an Asst5. That’s a lot of Assts.
In my entire career as a writer and television producer, I’ve only ever had one at any given time. And often, there wasn’t enough for that one person to do.
I can only imagine the stressful life and demanding responsibilities a person must suffer under to require at least three people to pitch in and sort out, to collect new contact information and manage to-do lists and make sure there are enough little water bottles in the office refrigerator.
“Asst3” is the kind of thing, I expect, that’s not really designed for people like me, writers and solo performers and general grouches, to notice. “Asst3” is the kind of thing created to make it clear to the boss’s peers in the industry that they really aren’t peers at all.
Think about it: If you wanted to send a subtle message to a colleague or person of similar rank at another enterprise, you couldn’t do better than send it via your third assistant, implying that assistants one and two are busy handling other, higher status, personnel.
Years ago, a friend of mine was running an enormous and well-known tech company, and he ran into a fellow high-ranking executive at another enormous and well-known tech company. As they were chatting, the other executive suggested that they have lunch soon and told my friend that her chief of staff would be contacting him to set it up.
It had exactly the effect that I assume was intended: Wait, you have a chief of staff? Wait, do I need a chief of staff? And also, Your chief of staff should call my chief of staff, that’s the way this should go, so I’d better get a chief of staff.
I’m not saying they weren’t both busy people. And what do I know? Maybe there are jobs and lives and complicated enterprises that require assistants one to three.
What I do know is this: Once the number is three, it’ll be five soon enough. Once there’s a chief of staff, there will be a deputy chief and probably deputy chiefs. Abraham Lincoln managed an entire civil war with two main assistants, John G. Nicolay and John M. Hay. Today, the White House operation has about 4,000.
Imagine getting an email from [email protected]. If you’re not important enough to get an email from a [email protected] or better, maybe it’s time to rethink your sense of importance.
There may be layoffs happening throughout the economy and recession-related contractions on the way in the coming year, but there does seem to be a roaring and tight labor market in the Asst space.
Soon, government and industry will be buzzing with helpfully numbered and ranked assistants, each trying to sort out which of the other assistants are directly opposite, and maybe once or twice trying to jump a tier — this is capitalism, after all — and going right to Asst51 despite being at Asst79 level.
Rob Long is a television writer and producer and the co-founder of Ricochet.com.
