TLDR: I’m helping my former boss’s current personal assistant to plan her “escape”.
This is just an extended rant post.
I used to be a personal assistant for a pretty unsuccessful film producer (referred to as Richard below) with anger issues. Underpaid, overworked, I worked there for a year. I did learn a lot, but mostly self taught and with a few pointers from him. I quit when a position of his friend’s (pretty successful) production company opened up and he recommended a lesser qualified candidate than me. In his own word, he didn’t recommend me for the job “for the obvious selfish reason”. I still had his email saved. I gave him a 2-week notice (in front of the another coworker Chris, so I have witness) and even stay an extra 1 week to wrap stuff up; however he dared to complain to his former assistant Laura that I left without notice.
I later chatted with Chris and his girlfriend and apparently my former boss is known for hiring personal assistant with low wage, as exchange for “experience”, most people leave after they realize my boss rarely has anything going on.
I got another job in 2019 fortunately (with the some of skills I learnt from this job) and COVID hit. I was glad I had a stable job in the new company, while COVID basically destroyed all of the 2020-2021 plan the former boss had. I knew because he forgot to take me off all the work cc list. Even the new kid he hired after me had quit within a year.
Now he is with the 2nd personal assistant (Amy) after me, and she has been working there for 5 months. Her job was subsidized by the union “training program” and she has to stay for 6 months to complete the program. Richard dumbly connected Amy and me a few months ago because he wanted me to update his website for free. Amy is planning to leave at the end of month (this is her own idea and not because of my interference).
Amy is an actress and my former boss has promised her a flexible work schedule, but every time she has an audition, he would give her extra stuff to do to keep her at work. He knows that the moment she is casted for a show, she would GTFO ASAP. He obviously has an abandonment issue. We have been plotting her “escape plan” ever since we met because what I’ve experienced was what she is experiencing.
Richard already could tell that Amy was planning to leave since January and asked Amy to cc Laura (his former assistant before my time) in all her emails, even though Laura isn’t in his payroll. Laura is also a pretty toxic person. We worked together for some projects after I quit. They are a match made in heaven.
A few weeks ago, Amy officially told Richard she would not extend her contract when the training program is over. Somehow he is still delusional about it and now he has purchased Cannes film festival tickets for the new assistant and tried to guilt trip her to stay.
She is trying to get out of it now. I told her that if Richard is paying for flight and hotel, she should just go and take a vacation, and then quit after she comes back. Not sure if Richard will bite because he did not pay for my flight and hotel stay when I travelled for work last time.
Lesson I learnt: People don’t change. Quit if you have a toxic boss.