The harrowing tale of a Hollywood PA

There are many accounts of the shocking tasks celebrity assistants have been asked to do and now a new tell-all book shows that Hollywood’s show business executives are getting in on the act too.

Lydia Whitlock worked as an assistant in various sectors of the entertainment industry for five years. While none of her bosses were famous, she says she still received her fair share of outrageous requests, which she has compiled into a book, To My Future Assistant. Here are just a few of Lydia’s weirdest encounters.

An executive once screamed at her because the butter she provided with his lunch was “too warm” and told her she had to feel each packet of the spread to ensure it was the right temperature. Another used to indicate that she should follow him by clicking his tongue at her as if she were a dog.

Lydia appears to have had her fair share of impossible requests, as her-then manager phoned up one day and asked her to help him find out where he was, based on the names of roads he passed as he was driving – and she had never been to the town he was in. She says she also once spent an entire day researching party supply shops and sending interns to each in order to track down an exact shade of napkins that her manager couldn’t accurately describe without seeing.

She sacrificed much of her free time and even put her health at risk for some of her bosses, spending one Thanksgiving taking notes for a conference call that was being recorded anyway. When she had a severe case of bronchitis, her boss “strongly suggested” that she needed to be at work and only made the concession that she could go home after lunch if she answered emails from her sick bed.

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