Spooky Stories: Part II - What Happened in 2014

The first week went as expected: everyone was busy finishing up ongoing projects, and I was mostly ignored. That's what happens when you join a video game company in early June. I waited for guidance, perusing files and documents seeking to learn and absorb whatever I could find.

My main colleagues were Cindy* and four people on the video team in the main office. Cindy worked a similar role to my own and was in the same satellite office as Greg Everage and me. She was a spirited young woman around my age with a love of food, adventure, and creativity. Where she didn't have passion for the company or video games, she had passion for life. Cindy was one of those people that got along with everyone, and if you didn't get along with her, that was on YOU.

After a couple weeks of no work and no guidance, I again requested some training or reading to dive into while everyone was preoccupied. Cindy and Greg each stated that there was nothing—no training documents, no processes, no guidelines, no...plan. Strange. I had worked in the corporate world for several years for a few companies at that point, and each time there was a transition and onboarding support. Left with no other option, I trusted Greg and Cindy, hoping they would eventually provide clarity about how to fulfill the job duties I signed up for.

As it turned out, the only training I would receive from Greg was being CC’ed on emails—a lot of them. In fact, Greg's school of training was to forward or CC me on every email he had, and for me to ensure ANY and ALL (his words) of my received emails included him. My daily routine was reading through a flood of conversations with no rhyme, no reason. In our nearly daily morning meetings, I asked for context regarding the long email threads and was told “it would make sense eventually” and "you just have to dive in."

Strangely, I was not allowed to talk to employees about work-related topics without Greg being present. If I had a conversation with someone in passing about a project, I would tell Greg what was discussed, and I'd be reprimanded for not bringing him into the conversation as it happened. After enough lectures from Greg, I opted to stop colleagues from talking to me about anything work-related and would either escort them to Greg or suggest they reach out to him directly. (More on this later.)

Along with no onboarding to my job, I was given strange administrative tasks from Greg to assist him.

Greg would come to my desk and dictate to me. The directive was to type out what he’d say, send to him for review, and he would either send the email from his own account, or I'd send the emails stating they were on his behalf.
He would send me lists of meetings and appointments to set up for him. He would then meet with these individuals one-on-one to sell our team's services. He would show off his personal demo reel, asking that the individual consider using his team for "any and all of your creative needs." My role in those meetings was to "be a quiet fly on the wall" and take notes for him to review.
I scanned, cleaned up, organized, and printed documents for him.
I would often read though his emails for him, highlighting important items for him to focus on.
Greg used me as a conduit for communicating with our remote team; I would relay messages between him and the four team members. For example, he'd ask me what a team member was doing on any given day. The expectation was I'd call each of them daily, ask what they were doing that day, and relay that information to Greg via a daily report.

I recommended we have standup meetings (where each team member summarizes what they're working on and what's coming up) to be more efficient, but Greg refused my solution. "You need to know what they do every day by getting on the horn [picking up the phone and calling them], and you need to share that info with me. You need to be all over this, for me." Of course, the four remote colleagues resisted this strange chain of communication, and luckily, they realized I suggested a more logical ways to review projects' status, but Greg wanted it HIS way.

Sure, none of that sounds that strange if you're an admin or an assistant. Thing is, I was not hired to do those things, and that was all that I did. I was Greg's assistant. I felt confused, frustrated. The tasks were drastically off-script from what was described in the job listing, but I was committed to making it work. I moved from Chicago to the Bay Area for my...dream job, after all.

[The job description]

You’re an Admin Now

From a Skype conversation with Greg: "i am putting something [together] for ben right now and half listening so take good notes for me"