What ever happened to Maggie's World?

It doesn't feel like my world anymore...

Welcome to Maggie’s World!

Usually it’s someone else’s world and they have been very greedy with custody as of late.

Hello, dear readers, and welcome back to Maggie’s World! The only newsletter where something feels really wrong.

Where have I been?

The last time I wrote a Maggie’s World was almost a year ago, and that’s a miserable fact because I love writing Maggie’s World and I can’t say the same for everything I spend my time doing.

I wrote Maggie’s World when I had less other work to do and felt more comfortable documenting my life. In February of last year, I got an office job and I’ve been conflicted to write about it.

My gratitude to be employed and general self-awareness prevent me from writing with any specificity about my job or how it makes me feel at this time.

Apropos of nothing, here are my five rules for assistants in the modern office:

Five Rules for Assistants in the Modern Office

These five rules will help you to avoid situations that will build your resentment towards your work.¹

Focus on the tasks that are ACTUALLY assigned to you.

Whether it be in an effort to embody the infamous “team player” or collect the simple safety which causing the happiness of your superiors may provide, proceed with caution before volunteering yourself for extra work. It doesn’t matter how glaring the “workflow inefficiency,” “outdated webpage,” or “break room electrical fire,” that you have noticed is. If you aren’t careful with taking on extra work, your days will be torturous, and you’ll have no one to blame but yourself. And trust me, you’ll be much happier blaming someone else if your days are torturous.

Bring a big cold drink.

You need a big, cold drink on your desk to help you get through the day. I mean, what’s the alternative? To just sit at your desk and think about if you had a big, cold drink? To consider life outside of the office, where the big, cold drinks are plenty and troubles are few? It’s thoughts like that which get you into trouble. In fact, that’s how all the great tragedies begin, whereas all the great comedies begin with a guy spilling soda on himself.

You’re going to want the intrigue, danger, and confusion of condensation leaking everywhere and getting on your keyboard and your mouse and, oh God, not the documents! By the end of the day it should just be one cloudy, room-temperature sip of melted ice.

Sure, teach a man to fish (one time).

Do not explain to a colleague how to print/fax/set up a Zoom meeting/attach a PDF/whatever more than one time. If you have the time, explain it once or, better yet, refer them to IT. Make sure your coworker takes notes of whatever directions they receive. You want to be a resource to your team; you don’t want to spend big chunks of your day teaching someone to do something again and again or, worse, doing that thing for them.

Your colleagues have a responsibility to learn technologies that are relevant to their position. If you had disregarded that responsibility for yourself, you would be considered unemployable. I often wonder if playing dumb is actually a better strategy, i.e. “What did you say? ‘Zoom?’ Is that like Skype?” or “I actually don’t think we’re allowed to print.”

Wear something mildly inappropriate.

Wear a little skirt. Wear a huge sweater. Wear jeans and your sneakers. Take freedoms where you can. You will feel so much better if you feel like yourself. Fascists and misogynists can kick rocks.

Keep track of everything you do.

Make an outline of your responsibilities broken down into daily, monthly, quarterly, and annual tasks. Edit this over the course of your time in the office, adding new regular tasks or any big projects. At some point someone will ask how things are going, and if your responsibilities have been changing, it’s time to negotiate a salary increase too.²

In closing,

I am sorry it’s been so long. I want Maggie’s World to be a part of my life again and yours, too. It really is the greatest newsletter ever written.

All you’ve missed from me this year is I’ve been working, performing, and spottily attending to my sorely neglected friendships. I feel grateful and proud of myself for using my non-work time to do 66 comedy shows this year, but dedication to work and comedy has been at the expense of my more time-intensive writing (Maggie’s World, untitled novel³) and, too often, being a good friend and taking care of myself. I will do better in 2023.

As always, thank you for reading. Please like, subscribe, and tell your friends about Maggie’s World. It’s the only newsletter that you actually aren’t allowed to print.

1. Disclaimer: These tips work the best if you are an assistant in an office that is somehow exactly like my office.

2. Disclaimer: I have no idea how to negotiate a salary increase. Why did I even bother skimming Lean In and going to Wellesley, you ask? Couldn’t tell you.

3. When an actor sells his soul to the Devil for a star turn in the town play, the case lands on indolent, jaded Tony’s desk, a local Agent of Hell, who must quickly figure out how to use his powers for more than petty trouble. Think Bedazzled (1967) meets Schitt’s Creek. It’s not really like Schitt’s Creek but everybody says their idea is sort of like that.