Assistants Are Confessing The Wildest Tasks And Requests They've Ever Been Assigned On The Job, And IDK Whether To Laugh Or Cry

Recently, we asked assistants from the BuzzFeed Community to share the wildest tasks and requests they’ve ever been asked to do while working. Here are some of their most memorable responses:

1.

This icky clean-up request:

2.

This awkward getting busy request:

“Once I had a doctor who wanted me to get him sex workers to keep him busy in between patients. Two or three a day.”

—Anonymous

3.

This suuuuper specific font sizing request:

4.

This beyond the grave request:

“I worked in an admin role pretty closely with a senior VP in our company but was not his personal assistant. Yet somehow in the time I was there I was still roped into doing things like scheduling his dog’s neutering service, running the guest list for his daughter’s wedding, and craziest of all, designing the headstone for his mother’s grave (who I had never met btw). Not kidding at all. I designed the headstone of his mother’s grave on freaking PowerPoint and emailed it to the stone company that made it. Talk about outside my job description.”

—stephyelisabeth

5.

This cat lover request:

6.

This post-employment carpet cleaning request:

“While working as a legal assistant I had one lawyer boss who was constantly challenging me. On my last day at the firm (Friday) he called me into his office and asked if I could leave my keys for the carpet cleaners scheduled to come the next day (Saturday). I told him that I had already handed them in to HR because this was my last day.

He then asked if the other assistant could leave her keys. I told him that she had already left for the day. He didn’t say anything else, so I left his office and went home at the end of the day, no longer employed there. The next morning (Saturday), I got an angry phone call from the same lawyer boss demanding an explanation as to where I was. I was SUPPOSED to be at the office to let in the carpet cleaners!

When I recounted our conversation of the previous day, he acted like he had no recollection of it. I would be lying if I said he didn’t call me a few weeks later with a similar delusional request.”

—Anonymous

7.

This wild attempt to skip rush hour request:

8.

This wacky “take a journey around the city” request:

“I was interning (as an unpaid assistant) for a non-profit arts/filmmaker group in NYC. My boss was ‘from the industry’ so she got away with a lot of diva behavior. One morning, she came in extremely hungover saying she had lost her shoes the night before and I had to find them. Not only was I new to the city, this was in 2010.

She couldn’t remember where she went but she was pretty sure she had checked into Foursquare most of the night. I spent most of the day following her check-ins with printed MapQuest directions but couldn’t find the shoes. I did find her sunglasses she didn’t know she left behind. When I came back empty-handed, she was angry. Eventually one of her friends texted her that she had her shoes. She never apologized.”

—Anonymous

9.

This seemingly simple pencil sharpening request:

10.

This lazy OOO message request:

“I work in IT. Once we had an administrative assistant ask us to go in on the backend and apply an out of office reply on her boss’ email. The kicker is that the boss asked her to do this rather than doing it herself. The entitlement blew my mind.”

—maetelle

11.

This vasectomy appointment request:

12.

This post-surgery patient request:

“My old boss had me pick up his wife after her facelift surgery. I had to help her get dressed, get her to my car (while she still had drains in her face), stop at the pharmacy for her prescriptions, take her home, get her to bed, and make sure she had her water, pills, and cellphone before she would let me leave and go to the office.”

—Anonymous

13.

This penny-pinching tire request:

14.

This petty noise-cancelling request:

“When my boss wanted me to go downstairs and ask the maintenance men to stop using the leaf blowers because it was annoying them. Yeah…I didn’t go do that.”

—Anonymous

15.

This impromptu babysitting request:

16.

This post-op cream application request:

“My boss had a bunch of suspicious moles removed and asked me to put antibiotic ointment on the spots. I refused since he was already standing in his office in only his underwear.”

—Anonymous