So you once had to make your boss coffee? Or pick up her dry cleaning? Ha! Kids' stuff. In the entertainment world, assistants to the power players are subjected to abuses of a far more degrading nature. ''There are a lot of creative people out here,'' says Mike Weiss, owner of the Job Factory, a Los Angeles-based placement agency. ''And they've been known to use their assistants creatively.'' To wit:
EAT IT AND WEEP
You've heard of royal tasters, but... royal
dieters? One film producer forced his assistant to go on various
fad diets (a carrot-juice fast, a liquid-protein diet, etc.) to
see which one worked best. Then there's a TV titan who wasn't in
the pound-shedding mode. A former assistant on his popular '80s
sitcom says that each night, an underling had to get the star's
dinner from four different restaurants (the appetizer from one
place, etc.). Even pickier is the movie agent who makes his
assistant count out the ice cubes in his Coke. He likes exactly
five.
BODILY FUNCTIONS
Shrinking violets, stay out of the assistant
pool. Among the more down-and-dirty tasks: delivering a
producer's deposit to the sperm bank; buying Depends for a TV
honcho's wife; and cleaning out an exec's lactation pump. Former
PA Mindy Morgenstern is one of the few who said no. Her boss at
the time, a director, called her at 6:30 a.m. and demanded she
pick up his sick son's stool sample and deliver it to the lab.
Morgenstern had a messenger do it instead: ''He punished me by
making me pick up turtle food for his pet.''
DANGEROUS LIAISONS
Legend has it one TV producer wanted to
test out his home's new guard dog, so he forced an assistant to
act the part of a trespasser. Another bold subordinate is
required to heckle his stand-up comic boss at clubs with
prearranged material, allowing the comedian to verbally
humiliate him. One time, the hapless heckler got a little too
boisterous, and an annoyed audience member beat him up, giving
him two cracked ribs. Over at a prominent agent's office, the
fashion challenged must face a pair of sharp scissors. According
to George Huang, director of the 1995 boss-from-hell movie
Swimming With Sharks, if this fellow doesn't like his
assistant's tie, he just snips it off. ''I couldn't use that in
the movie,'' says Huang, ''because no one would ever believe that
would happen.''
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