Effort
In this chapter we're going to explore the idea of "effort." What you put into your job can dictate how much you get out of it. So what happens when you put in just enough, but not too much?
When I was first hired, Conan was still in New York in his final season of Late Night with Conan O'Brien. I started working for him in the beginning of January of 2009, but he wouldn't wrap up the show until February. He eventually moved to California in March of that year, and I spent my first three months as his assistant working remotely. I remember finding an empty office at NBC and taking meticulous notes for the ways I could help him and his family transition their lives from New York to California.
The day after I got word that I'd be working for Conan, I met him at a Peet's Coffee in Brentwood with a booklet about Los Angeles that I made myself and a notepad to take notes. I handed the booklet to Conan at our meeting-a lifelong Angeleno handing over all her knowledge to the new kid in town. It was so important to me to make a good impression that I'd spent all day fastidiously putting together essential information about Los Angeles, and then took it to Kinko's to get it laminated and bound. Conan had lived in Los Angeles sixteen years prior, but I thought it would be good to show him how I would go the extra mile.
During our coffee meeting, I remember telling Conan that I wanted to work on something that inspired me and that I was proud to be a part of. His humility and decency were what really struck me. Right after I left, I met up with my brother and sister-in-law at a restaurant in Toluca Lake, and I was noticeably shaken. I'd known that taking this job would change my life forever, but I hadn't realized how nice of a person Conan would be. That first meeting made me want to work harder for him.
A couple days after I got the job, Conan's wife, Liza, wrote me the nicest email introducing herself and telling me a little about their family and sent me a photo of their kids, Neve and Beckett, who at the time were five and three. I have to admit that before I got to know Conan and his lovely wife a little better, I had been most worried about Liza. Was she going to be a trophy wife who would abuse me or be stereotypically awful? Was she going to yell at me if I forgot to tell her about a change in Conan's travel itinerary? Would I be asked to pick up her dry cleaning in the middle of a workday? What I learned very
quickly was that Liza is not only brilliant and kind and decent, but also my most important ally. She became a sounding board whenever I felt like I was having a tough time with Conan. I often say that my favorite thing about Conan is Liza, and that is a sentiment that only gets truer as time goes on.
So why am I saying all this sappy stuff? Because when I first got my job, I wanted to do the best I could. I needed to make sure that this very nice man and his wonderful wife were happy. I was now a part of their lives. Assistants get close to the people they work for, and I knew that over time, the O'Briens would become very important figures in my life. I was right about that.
Reminiscing about those early days-back in a time when I enthusiastically went to Kinko's to bind and laminate a homemade booklet in hopes of being helpful-it's hard to say when my relationship with Conan went from being professional to the dysfunctional mess it is now.
It could've been when, three months into my job, I was speaking Armenian on the phone with my grandmother and Conan asked if I was arguing with Dracula.
It also could've been a year later, when he told Rolling Stone magazine that I floated to this country in a basket while my father was in the midst of a goat attack on the island of Armenia (I was born in Los Angeles, my father is not a goat herder, and Armenia is landlocked).
All I know is that something happened, or gradually happened, to make me go from the girl who makes booklets to the girl who occasionally slips a marijuana edible into her lunch.
Conan became the second older brother I never wanted. The dynamic shifted, and so did my work ethic.
I'm happy to take most of the blame for my gradual decline in any willingness to work. But doesn't my boss deserve some credit? Wouldn't the World's Worst Assistant need to be enabled by the World's Worst Boss?
Neve and Beckett used to always say that Conan melted half my brain. When asked what happened to the other half, they would say that other half was already melted before I met him. I have never heard a better description of me.
Am I proud of what I've become? Yes. I get paid to do the bare minimum. Is this where I saw myself ? No. But then again, everything I've been fortunate enough to experience has been a pleasant surprise. Would I try harder at another job? Yes, without a doubt. So when Conan retires, please hire me. Until then, I will proudly take my place on the Mount Rushmore of terrible assistants . . . alone. I know there are other bad assistants out there-I'm sure of it-but I refuse to share my title as the worst in the world.
The One When I Binged Friends
We all have heroes.
In 2009, a young boy from Singapore named Joseph Schooling met his hero Michael Phelps. Seven years later, Schooling would beat Phelps at the 2016 Rio Olympics in the 100-meter butterfly.
Naomi Osaka grew up in Long Island, New York, idolizing Serena Williams. At twenty, she would compete against Williams in the US Open and win.
When I heard Robert De Niro was suing his former assistant for, among many other things, watching fifty-five episodes of Friends in four days while at work, I can only imagine I felt the same thing Schooling and Osaka felt when they first saw their heroes excel . . . Fifty-five episodes? In four days? While at work? I had never been so in awe of anyone. A small piece of me thought, "Fifty-five episodes? I could do better than that."
Luckily, one of our writers thought that it was an excellent idea that I should devote my week to beating De Niro's assistant's record.
Each episode of Friends is about twenty-two to twenty-three minutes long. To watch fifty-five episodes, you'd have to allot 1,265 minutes of your life, or a little over twenty-one hours. To watch fifty-five episodes, you'd have to watch about 5.5 hours of Friends per day for four days straight. To make things even more difficult, my workday starts at 10 a.m., and I would have until we taped at 4:30 p.m. to watch as many episodes as possible. That's 6.5 hours of time I had to watch 5.5 hours of TV just to keep up with De Niro's assistant. I cracked my knuckles and got to work.
For four days, I binged. I laughed. I cried. I started forcing my friends to meet me in coffee shops. I would move sofas with unwilling pals just so I could yell "Pivot!" I stopped giving the middle finger and started pounding my fists together. I became the living embodiment of Friends. At the end of the four-day timeline, I had watched fifty-eight episodes. Like a motherfucking champion.
As a gift from Conan for beating De Niro's assistant's record, I got all fifty-eight episodes I watched on VHS, a basket full of marijuana edibles, and six puppies named after each of the main characters on Friends.
I guess I should rewind a bit and explain how I became so brazen about watching TV at work.
When I first started interning at NBC, I noticed that everybody who worked there had a TV either at their desk or in their office. When working in television, wouldn't it make sense to have a television at your disposal? It's there to watch the shows you're working on-to watch edits of various episodes and keep up with the content you're distributing globally. It's also to keep up with whatever is going on in the world. Is someone from a show you're working on stopping by The View? Then you should watch the interview on your TV. Is Extra going to do a special segment on the show you're adapting from a popular novel? Then here's your TV to stay in the know.
Somewhere down the line, I noticed no one ever cared what you were watching. It's not like they could keep up with how every show was being promoted, and they could never say something you were watching wasn't pertinent to your job because no one ever really knew, so I made it a habit to have the TV on all the time. When I was the events and operations coordinator, my desk was in the common area in the middle of all these offices, and the TV I watched was affixed to the wall. That's when I learned I could watch Jerry Springer every day at a very high volume. I can't imagine how annoying it was to everyone I worked with, and I'm shocked no one ever said anything about it. I do remember a lot of the office doors remained closed throughout the entire day, and now I wonder if my regularly scheduled programming might have had something to do with it. Regardless, passively watching television for work eventually became just watching television because it's there. And that's how they thought of me for this segment-through my brazen and widely known disregard for office etiquette and my unapologetic attitude toward watching TV at work.
Anyway, the day after I beat the Friends binging record, I forced Jeff Ross's assistant, David Hopping, to come with me to all the locations on the Warner Bros. lot where they shot Friends.
The following week, I took all the photos and footage I shot visiting the locations on the lot and edited a movie in iMovie with the Friends theme as the background music. I uploaded it to Instagram, but it was taken down within five minutes because of copyright infringement. The locations were fine, but I couldn't use the theme song. So I enlisted David again, this time asking him to drop everything he was doing so we could figure out a way to get around the copyright infringement issues with the theme song. I decided the best thing to do would be to sing it myself with David as the backup (the "clapper").
How much time did I waste? We already know that from Monday to Thursday, I watched almost twenty-three hours of television. We spent about five hours on Friday going to all the locations on the Warner Bros. lot. I spent another two hours editing the video and another hour dealing with the Friends copyright infringement debacle on Instagram. All in all, I calculate thirty-one hours of my workweek were completely wasted on this Friends binge challenge. Additionally, if you factor in the breaks I take for the bathroom and lunch and doing the crossword puzzle and socializing, then I'm actually in overtime. I got paid my regular work salary, plus overtime, plus appearance fees for the show, so I made a nice profit from watching TV at work and doing no real work. Plus, I stole David away for a few hours to help me with the photo shoot and Instagram post.
I don't have any Olympic medals, and I've never won a Grand Slam title, but I'm sure whatever Schooling and Osaka felt when they beat their idols is a fraction of the joy I felt when I beat Robert De Niro's former assistant's binging record. Like her, I was fortunate enough to find my purpose and excel at my goals. Like her, I will be remembered forever. This is my legacy.
Copyright © 2022 by Sona Movsesian. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
