The Personal Assistant: A Long Road to Hell and Back

A little over a month ago, my ass was saved. I had gotten a job. I hadn't had a steady job or paycheck (except for unemployment) in 2 years. I was desperate. I was running out of money to pay bills and my unemployment was running thin. I was having a bad day. A really bad day. I was late paying my credit cards, my savings were dwindling, and I had no hope of finding a job. I had been applying and sending resumes all day every day for weeks and nothing was coming of it. I called my boyfriend, Jason, at work, I cried to him. I was so worried that I couldn't find any work. He tried to console me but at the moment it was no use, I was freaking out. I think we even argued about finances a little while we were on the phone. About 5 minutes later, as I was monotonously sending out another resume and cover letter, I got a text from my friend, Natalie. She asked if I was still looking for a job. I told her I was desperate. She said she had a friend who was looking for a personal assistant. That was right up my alley, because I want to keep the flexibility to be able to audition. It was like the Universe opened up and dropped this potential job right in my lap.

 I anxiously called the number. No one answered, so I left a message, thinking whoever it was probably wouldn't even get back to me. I went back to my craigslist job hunt. About 10 minutes later, they called back. I answered and an enthusiastic woman named Charo explained to me what the job entailed. She was seeking someone to be an assistant to her business partner, David. Seemed easy enough. She then asked me if I could meet them at 8pm that evening at his house. It was already after 6pm...Not only had I been crying, but I was battling a small sinus infection, so I looked like shit, and I hadn't bathed yet that day...But I agreed to meet them at 8pm. I took the fastest shower ever, put on a little makeup, found something kind of decent to wear, and left in a hurry. 

I arrived at David's condo, and rang the gate bell. It buzzed me in and I walked into the small courtyard, which was very nice and peaceful. There was a small Koi pond with a bridge in the middle of the courtyard. I thought this place would be nice to work at every day. How wrong I was. I walked up to the door and before I could knock, a short, overly buff, middle-aged man opened the door abruptly. The serene atmosphere of the courtyard was instantly taken away. It was still light outside, but as I looked past David's shoulder into his apartment, it was all dark, except for DJ/Disco lights, and black lights...He also had house music blasting loudly. Now, I love house music, so that was cool and all, but I really didn't want to enter this place by myself when it was all dark and shit. Suddenly, Charo walked up from the gate and immediately gave me a hug, really making me feel better about walking into this place. 

As soon as I walked in, I noticed a stripper pole to my left in the living room. I kinda just wanted to run out the door, but I didn't. I'm not one to judge, so it didn't matter too much to me. I noticed right away that David was kind of, out-there, but he seemed nice, and he and Charo and I talked for quite a while. From what I gathered, David was extremely disorganized, harried, and just plain hyper. I’m pretty sure he was on some kind of drugs. He explained that he was in the music business, and had recently started writing contracts to sign artists to him so he could manage them and make money from their success. Along with that, he wanted to write a movie, and blah blah blah…He decided right then and there that he wanted to hire me, and I was extremely relieved to have a job. They talked about getting me an iPhone and possibly an iPad, and I was in shock over this since I never thought I'd have the money to get either of those things myself. I was so happy and grateful that I would have this new job with these kinds of perks. They told me that the next day, they had an important meeting with people to start working on their projects, and they needed me there to keep David organized, and to take minutes. I should have known from how long it took me to get out of there that night, that that kind of thing would be regular; always waiting for David to do what he needed to do. Constantly having to remind him of the same thing over and over again. He took forever to draw up a non-disclosure agreement for me to sign. I think I finally left after 10pm.

The meeting the next day was, in all honesty, a joke. Seriously, only a few people were actually there. David had told the graphic design artist the wrong place to go, so the poor guy was on the other side of town, asking where WE were…it was not very good. The only people who were there were, me, David, Charo, David’s business partner, Brian, and some girl they hired to do “marketing”. That was it. It was so not what I thought it was going to be, and not really professional at all. I started to figure out right away that this guy was kind of just, all talk and no deliver.

Charo, on the other hand, was actually showing that she had quite a few connections in the biz, and she delivered. Everyone we got to talk to after that was someone she knew. She got camera crews, producers, investors, you name it. She had written screenplays that actually won awards, and she really seemed to be trying to make something of her life. David, well, he always found weird, crazy people, who were usually flakes or liars that didn’t have anything to offer us. Over the span of the month that I worked for him, I knew he wasn’t going to get much done, or get anywhere with what he wanted to do, even as much as I was trying to help him. I did everything he asked me to do and it still really wasn’t enough to make any headway. I tried to keep him on task, I constantly reminded him of things that need to be done, but he never seemed to be listening.

Gradually I noticed that David went from being super ecstatic that he had me as his assistant, to barely acknowledging I was around. When I first started, everything I did got a great reaction from him: “I knew I hired you for the right reason! Sarah, you’re awesome, you’re the best! Everything is so much easier now that you’re helping me!” After a few weeks, I barely got a “thanks” from him for anything. Suddenly he was involved in some major drama with his second ex-wife. She was hacking his phones and computer, and going all psycho on him. Instead of handling the situation with poise and maturity, he acted like a child in junior high school. He’s the kind of person that won’t just go to the police if someone is doing something illegally to him, most likely because he’s done those same illegal things and then some, and he wouldn’t want to get caught for those things either. Anyway, instead of doing the right thing, he just HAD to hack into her things too, and break into her apartment and steal incriminating evidence of what she was doing to him. He became completely consumed with trying to bully her off facebook and looking at what she was doing all day every day. I would ask him if he needed me for the day, or even the week, and all I got was “no.” No explanation, just, “no.” He would say he had “errands” to run, but um, wait, I was his assistant, shouldn’t I be running the fucking errands?! I knew then that he was lying and what I heard from people who knew him was, he was obsessing over his ex, just like I thought. He wasn’t running errands; he was stalking her just like she was stalking him.

David hadn’t used me for work in a week. I finally got a couple hours of work in on the day before I was leaving for Yosemite to go camping with my friends. The whole two hours I was at his place, I really didn’t have much of anything to do. About 30 minutes after I arrived he said, “So, what are you doing right now?” and I said, “Um nothing. You haven’t given me anything to do yet.” He then told me to call Verizon because both of his phones were messing up. I had been through this with him before, and I can honestly tell you, any tech problems he had, were his own fucking fault. He has no idea how to use any of the gadgets he gets, and he never thinks it’s his fault, of course he thinks it’s the device, or someone else’s problem. I called Verizon while he went out to do who knows what, and they wanted me to do a hard reset on the phones. When he got back I told him this, and he got really upset and told me “No no no, you have to tell them I need the phone records because my ex is hacking into them!” and so on, and I stopped him and said, “Wait just a minute, you never told me to tell them ANY of this, and besides that, they need a subpoena from the POLICE if you want the records in the first place.” And going to the police was something he kept saying he would do, but hadn’t done it yet. He kept forgetting what he had told me to do or what he hadn’t told me to do, because he just wasn’t paying any attention to anything but his obsession with his ex. He wasn’t remembering anything correctly. I feel like he has been on this downward spiral for a while and I was just getting the brunt end of it. When I left his house that day I was furious. How dare he try to act like it was my fault that he didn’t tell me important information I needed to do MY job.

I went to Yosemite and heard nothing from him except for him trying to get the phone number of the glass repair guy so he could put glass in a closet door so he could make it into a recording booth…and I told him for the third time that the glass guys won’t touch the door until a carpenter cuts the wood out of the door because the glass guys wouldn’t do that part themselves, but as usual he didn’t listen to me anyway.

I came back from Yosemite and kept asking him if he needed me to work and he would either not answer or just reply by text, “No.” I was starting to worry, since I had made almost no money in the last week and a half. I was getting pissed that he was avoiding me. On payday, I texted him, asking if he needed me, and again, he said he didn’t, and I told him I wanted to come by and get my check. I also asked him if he even wanted me to work for him anymore…he didn’t answer that question at all, but told me to come by and get my check. My stomach dropped. I knew that since he didn’t answer my question, everything was ending.

I took my best friend, Neil, with me over to David’s for support because I had a bad feeling about it all. I let myself into his house, and as usual, he wasn’t there when he said he would be. I texted him and told him I was waiting for him. He finally arrived with bank statements in his hands, reading them , not really paying attention to me. He said his bank accounts were frozen because somehow they had fraud attempted on them, which I don’t believe since he owes some much to the IRS, I think they seized his accounts. He then asked if I had talked to Charo much, and I lied and said no. A week before this, Charo had decided to cut all ties with him, because he was treating her like shit and not paying her for any of the work she had done to help him. I knew all of this, but only let on to a little. He started ranting about how since she was gone, all the projects he was working on couldn’t be worked on anymore, and he kept saying they weren’t going anywhere anyway, which is a bunch of shit, but he likes to make himself think that only the things HE does are the right ones, but that’s just his silly defense mechanism. So in his mind, since there were no projects for him, there was no need for me anymore. Just like that. No warning, no remorse, just, “I don’t really need you right now”. I knew it was coming, and I tried to prepare for it, but I couldn’t. I was scared shitless because I have no other income and not much money in the first place, and rent was coming up in a couple days. He then had the audacity to ask if I was going to give him the iPhone and iPad right then, and I told him I would restore them first, then give them to him. I started to cry. I didn’t want him to see me in a weak moment like that, but I was so fucking angry that I couldn’t help it. I told him I wanted my check and he said that I should call him the next day and he would give me a personal check since that was the only account he had open at the moment. All of this was so nonchalant, as though it should be no big deal to me. This only enraged me more. He was just like, yeah call me tomorrow and I will pay you, like it was nothing. I was standing there in front of him, crying, my heart on my sleeve, and he didn’t give a fuck. I knew he wouldn’t, but it was still so shocking to actually be in the presence of a true sociopath; someone who really did not care about anyone else but himself. I have never met anyone else in real life who is like that. I threw my copies of his keys on the counter. Before walking out the door, I turned to him and said, “You really just don’t give a shit do you?” and he looked at me and his bank statements as though I was just talking about the money for that pay period. He looked at me as though I had some other source of money I could just tap into for whatever I needed. He couldn’t even say anything. I said, “You don’t even fucking realize that I have NOTHING, no other source of income but this job! So now I’m fucked because you don’t give a shit. Thanks for fucking nothing.” And I walked out. I knew there was no reason to continue on and cuss him out because he wasn’t listening anyway. Although, I must say, it was the first time I had ever seen him not say a fucking word after someone yelled at him. He usually takes it from 0 to 10 in a heartbeat as far as his anger goes when people stand up to him, but when I said these things to him, he couldn’t say a fucking word.

 

The next day, I went to his place to get my check. If he wasn’t going to pay me I was prepared to keep the iPhone and iPad until he did. I called him twice, kept ringing the bell outside, and he wasn’t answering. I called again and left a message saying that I was leaving in 15 minutes and he would have to mail my check, and I told him he wasn’t getting his shit back until I got my money. The son of a bitch called me right back. He asked when I would be there, and I very sternly told him I had already been there for ten fucking minutes. He came to the garage and opened it. I told him I didn’t want to go in his house, I just wanted my check. He said he didn’t bring his checkbook outside with him. We walked to the elevator, and the piece of shit actually tried to make small talk with me. I kept my sunglasses on, looked straight forward and didn’t respond, didn’t say a word to him at all. I totally ignored everything he said. He went upstairs and wrote the check. I grabbed it out of his hand, threw the i-Shit at him and walked out the door. I wanted to say so many mean things to him, but like I said, it wouldn’t have mattered in the first place, because he wouldn’t have heard any of it. He’s a sick person, with many internal demons, and that’s the only thing he’s focused on.

I’m angry. Not about the fact that I’m not working for him. I’m angry because he had the power to do what he did to me. Now that it’s over, he has no power over me. I talked to Charo and she’s paying me to work for her until I can find a new job. If it wasn’t for her, I don’t know what I would’ve done. I’m always trying to be positive that things will work out for the best. I want to be able to afford my OWN iPhone and iPad one day. I don’t want to struggle anymore. I’m using all my negative energy toward being creative, instead of dwelling on the bad parts of what happened. I’ve got some of my own projects that I’m working now to get me where I want to be, and I know people who can help with it all. The only thing I needed David for was a paycheck, and he barely gave me that. He has nothing else to offer anyone in this world, and I firmly believe that anyone in their right mind would be a happier person for the rest of their life if they stay away from him. He needs help, and he won’t admit it. He won’t go anywhere in life treating people the way he does. And in the end, the only thing he has is the one thing he’s most afraid of. Himself.