I need assistance, please

The role of the assistant has many facets, often depending upon what type of assistant. For instance, we have the assistant pilot, or copilot. He can take over for the real pilot if he gets tired or has to use the bathroom. Assisting surgeons probably do a lot of the same stuff. I think he takes over if the main guy panics. He can also act as a consultant when the primary surgeon asks, “Should this be that color?”The copilot helps the pilot with the maps (“Don’t look at the map. You just watch the road, er, sky.”) and as a corroborating witness to UFOs.One of the most important roles of the assistant is to provide job security for the assistee. It is always good when heading up a department to build up the staff before anybody notices. This way, when the inevitable cutbacks occur you have a buffer between yourself and the cut. This also demonstrates how much of a team player you are, willing to shoulder additional work to help out in hard times. The fact that you helped to create the hard times with your excess staff is not immediately apparent.Sales assistants do their boss’ job for them, at least the main stuff. This way fearless leader can do all that vital schmoozing that locks in customers while his underlings grind out the data and keeps track of orders. When the boss fires one of the salesmen, the assistant is the one who has to go collect the company car and deal with the mess, face to face. The assistant is also the one who gets to go to Canada in the winter and Florida in the summer. The boss will do the Hawaii conference.There are people who seek out these jobs in the mistaken belief that they do not bear the ultimate responsibility if something goes wrong. They think that they will be flying under the radar while the department head shoulders the blame. Wrong. Whether you know it or not, you will be first on line at the guillotine. When a department head gets called on the carpet, the first thing he will do, in my experience, is to start flailing about with his headsman’s ax to demonstrate that he is making serious changes. This buys him breathing space, sometimes as much as a year. In that time a lot of things can happen that could save his bacon. His boss could be fired, the company could be acquired, or he could find another job.So what do we learn from this? Assistants are the Blue Light Specials of industry, almost as good as the real boss, but a lot cheaper.Where is my intern? He was supposed to type this up for me.Bill Abrams resides, and conducts his business with his intern (wife), in Pine Plains.

Latest News

South Kent School’s unofficial March reunion

Elmarko Jackson was named a 2023 McDonald’s All American in his senior year at South Kent School. He helped lead the Cardinals to a New England Prep School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) AAA title victory and was recruited to play at the University of Kansas. This March he will play point guard for the Jayhawks when they enter the tournament as a No. 4 seed against (13) Samford University.

Riley Klein

SOUTH KENT — March Madness will feature seven former South Kent Cardinals who now play on Division 1 NCAA teams.

The top-tier high school basketball program will be well represented with graduates from each of the past three years heading to “The Big Dance.”

Keep ReadingShow less
Hotchkiss grads dancing with Yale

Nick Townsend helped Yale win the Ivy League.

Screenshot from ESPN+ Broadcast

LAKEVILLE — Yale University advanced to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament after a buzzer-beater win over Brown University in the Ivy League championship game Sunday, March 17.

On Yale’s roster this year are two graduates of The Hotchkiss School: Nick Townsend, class of ‘22, and Jack Molloy, class of ‘21. Townsend wears No. 42 and Molloy wears No. 33.

Keep ReadingShow less
Handbells of St. Andrew’s to ring out Easter morning

Anne Everett and Bonnie Rosborough wait their turn to sound notes as bell ringers practicing to take part in the Easter morning service at St. Andrew’s Church.

Kathryn Boughton

KENT—There will be a joyful noise in St. Andrew’s Church Easter morning when a set of handbells donated to the church some 40 years ago are used for the first time by a choir currently rehearsing with music director Susan Guse.

Guse said that the church got the valuable three-octave set when Harlem Valley Psychiatric Center closed in the late 1980s and the bells were donated to the church. “The center used the bells for music therapy for younger patients. Our priest then was chaplain there and when the center closed, he brought the bells here,” she explained.

Keep ReadingShow less
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Picasso’s American debut was a financial flop
Penguin Random House

‘Picasso’s War” by Foreign Affairs senior editor Hugh Eakin, who has written about the art world for publications like The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and The New York Times, is not about Pablo Picasso’s time in Nazi-occupied Paris and being harassed by the Gestapo, nor about his 1937 oil painting “Guernica,” in response to the aerial bombing of civilians in the Basque town during the Spanish Civil War.

Instead, the Penguin Random House book’s subtitle makes a clearer statement of intent: “How Modern Art Came To America.” This war was not between military forces but a cultural war combating America’s distaste for the emerging modernism that had flourished in Europe in the early decades of the 20th century.

Keep ReadingShow less