The Anonymous Production Assistant

Get Your Head in the Game, Rook

One of the PAs in the office is on the chopping block. Every day, he’s working to keep his job – fighting to keep his spot on “the team.” He doesn’t know it, but I hope he senses it. Over the last few weeks, I hope he’s noticed that the office has grown more frustrated […]

Chatty Cathy PA

The new PA in the office caught a bad rap on his first day. Actually, he walked in with a bad rap, and his first day only confirmed it. He’s chatty. There’s a fine line between being friendly and being chatty. He has crossed that line, and, while he doesn’t know that the coordinator, APOC, […]

The Similarities Between My Job and ‘The Wire’

I wrote on Twitter that I’ve been using this lull in the pre-production schedule to make my way through Season 3 of THE WIRE. For those uninitiated to one of the greatest shows ever, THE WIRE follows a police unit’s investigations of the criminal underworld in Baltimore, Maryland. In the show, the police commanders have […]

The Goldilocks Problem

In case you don’t know the story of Goldilocks, it’s a nineteenth century fairy tale about a girl who discovers the home of three porridge-loving bears. She has some of their porridge – a spoonful from each bowl. One is too hot, one is too cold, and one is just right. The story doesn’t say […]

Your Car, The Mobile Office

As a PA, you’ll spend 95% of your time between two places – your desk and your car. I try to keep my desk as clean as possible. My car is a different story. Until very recently, my car was a danger zone. Receipts, fast food bags, empty water bottles (don’t tell the Green PA) littered the […]

Act Like A Professional

The last few weeks have been pretty tough for me, personally. My family has decided to turn my life into a sick Edward Albee play, and, needless to say, it’s put me under a considerable amount of unneeded stress. It came out in my work last week. I made dumb mistakes. Rookie mistakes. In one […]

Old People Stand In The Way of the Future

If you were born in a decade that starts with the number 7, then you are old. Don’t be offended. Let me be the first to welcome you to your golden years. That being said, stop standing in the way of the future! I’m almost positive that I could write an entire blog about old […]

The Name Game

Last week, I started working in a new production office, which means lots of new show anxiety. New show anxiety means frantically digging through my room, looking for my social security card in order to prove my identity for my I-9, telling myself over and over, “I should really invest in a filing cabinet.” New […]

I Have This Conversation, Like, Five Times a Day

I really enjoy the Xtranormal videos production people have been posting on YouTube. In an effort to expand my media empire, I thought I’d create my own, about what it’s like answering the phone in a production office:

At the Sound of the Beep

Turns out, there was something I forgot to mention about phone etiquette in yesterday’s post. If a caller asks for someone who’s not there or unavailable, the first thing you do is offer alternatives– “Can I help you with something?” or “The coordinator’s not here, but the APOC is.” I worked on one show where […]

Phoning It In

As an office PA, if you’re not driving somewhere, you’re probably answering the phone. What surprises me is how many office PAs aren’t doing it right. Here’s a little refresher for those of you who think “Yeah?” is a perfectly acceptable salutation. When answering the phone, the correct greeting is, “[Show Title], this is [Your […]

You Have It. Use it.

I can’t tell you how many times a day people call the office and ask to be connected to some other department. Or a department head rings because he can’t remember his own department’s extension. Or someone on set calls to be connected to someone else… who is also on set. I always want to […]