The Real Psychotic Secretary

Back around 2000, while working as a “floating assistant” at a PR firm, right before Cruella came into the picture, I used to occasionally cover for the assistant to one of the other partners, a strange, quiet, demonically-possessed little man who looked like a cross between Imus and a Smurf, if you can conceive of such a being. In fact, we called him ‘Papa Smurf’, although not to his face or anything, we didn’t have a death wish.

Papa was quite the oddity. He was an ex-military man - small, bearded and fierce with a softer side which came out only occasionally on those days we had wine in the office.

He also had zero people skills, which for a man whose whole business is public relations and being a “spokesperson” is a little bizarre to begin with. He was known for an explosive temper, for smoking illicit cigars after hours in his office, for his love of long, multi-syllable, obscure words and for not being able to keep an assistant for more than three months.

Inevitably an excited assistant would start work, get weary fast and end up frazzled to the extent where she would either go bat-shit insane, quit or be fired for some capital offense like rescheduling a meeting on a day Papa Smurf had planned to go have a meltdown on the golf course.

One assistant was fired for amusingly sending him in a car to JFK to leave for an important client trip, when the flight actually was leaving from Newark. Oops! These things sometimes happen when you are multi-tasking. They are cringingly stupid even though they are somewhat important, but Papa wasn’t one for second chances, so she was out.

I heard stories of previous assistants who’d wound up crying in the bathrooms over his brutal treatment and others who’d ended up with therapist bills up the wazoo. I witnessed one fiery-tempered ex-assistant having a full-blown, screaming fight with him in his office – actually the entire block witnessed that argument – which resulted in her throwing a box of file folders clean across the room and stomping out. The last words I heard from her were, “you’re a despicable, bitter, filthy little man!” and then she was gone.

So anyway, on these occasions, I, as floating assistant, would be drafted in to cover the position until they found him a new permanent slave.

Now to be honest, he was always nice to me when I sat over there. It was only his actual assistants he treated like crap and as I was doing him a favor, he generally was agreeable.

He was also a man distrustful of computers so he hand-wrote everything and gave it all to me to type up. Pages and pages of what looked like Apache code but which was actually just his crazy handwriting. A million times a day I would say, “What is this word here? Is it ‘pigeon’?” and he’d sigh as though it were obvious and say, “It says ‘Volkswagen’.”

When he finally got his act together and advertised for a new assistant, we had two applicants that HR called in to interview. The first was a very smart, pretty, impeccably dressed black girl, with a friendly manner, extremely polite and very qualified. She just exuded confidence, but not in an egotistical, insufferable way, she just seemed perfectly capable and suited to the job and was organized and together, which is what Papa needed most. Most of his assistants up to that point, apart from the fiery-tempered file thrower, had been timid, soccer mom types who spend countless hours talking about daycare and groceries and who would cry if he raised his voice. This girl was a definite step up. So he interviewed her and seemed impressed by her abilities and her cheerful personality. A second candidate was coming in a half hour later and he’d practically decided this first girl was “the one” but out of courtesy decided he should still meet with the second.

This was a fatal mistake.

The second girl showed up and before she even said a word I knew exactly where she was from - 1985 New Jersey. She was a tall, thin, white girl, mid-thirties, wearing a black and white checkered suit with pencil skirt, heels, short, blonde-frosted tipped hair held in place by so much hairspray she was probably a legal fire hazard and wearing possibly the most severe facial cosmetics ever witnessed on a human being not of the transvestite persuasion. Thick pancake make-up, lashings of ultra white powder, enough eye make-up to frighten Marilyn Manson and thick pale purple lipstick. Her blush arced to a peak on her cheekbones. It was like someone had written down every offensive trend from the ‘80s and applied it to one person.

In the ten minutes she had to wait for Papa Smurf to be ready to see her, she sat and chatted with me. In that five minutes I learned:

She was married for ten years but was now divorced.
Her ex-husband was her best friend.
He still wanted to be with her and was holding out hope she’d reconsider.
She just wanted him around for the ego boost.
She had just started dating her neighbor who lived across the street.
Her ex had no idea about this and she was never going to tell him.
She and the new boyfriend fought all the time.
He was sexy as hell but had quite the temper.
When they had a fight she would bring some other guy home and make out with him in her car in the car port with the car port lights on so her neighbor could see and get jealous.
He had a 14 year old daughter who she got along with just great.
This man would spend every other night with her then creep home before dawn so his daughter would think he spent the night at home.
He gave her killer orgasms.
These orgasms were so “killer” she had a belly ache afterwards for the whole day.
She still used the same cornsilk powder on her face she used when she was 13.
She was a very efficient executive assistant and there was no job she couldn’t handle.
She had to pee every half hour because her bladder was “compromised”.

By the time she went into that room to meet Papa, my head was swirling and I was looking forward to the horrified look on Papa Smurf’s face when she left, because if there’s one thing he couldn’t stand, it was a chatty woman, especially an inappropriate chatty woman.

She was in there for probably 45 minutes. The other girl had been maybe 15 at the most. When she came out she was laughing and he was grinning ear-to-ear and making jokes, which made me think she spiked his coffee or something.

“So…” Papa Smurf said, after she left. “What did you think of the candidates?”

“Well,” I replied. “I liked the first girl a lot. She was really smart and organized and professional. I wasn’t so sure about the second girl.”

“Really?” he said. “I liked her. I think she’s the one.”

And so, to my utter amazement, Miss New Jersey 1985 was hired. And so the famous saga of “the worst assistant ever” began.

I have so many stories about this woman your head is going to spin.