Book excerpt: From the Hollywood assistant trenches, a hilarious guide to surviving life at the bottom of the totem pole. I will not make you sort my M&Ms by color. I will not take off four hours in the middle of the day to go shopping and then announce upon my return that “it’s going to be a late one—we need to catch up!” I will not request that you create and maintain my online dating profile. Welcome to the wickedly funny world of To My Assistant, where overworked and underappreciated assistants finally get their due. We’ve all been there. You might even be there right now. Do you depend upon your college education to handle crucial business decisions such as memorizing your boss’ lunch order, trying to schedule four meetings where only one can go, and helping your boss detag Facebook photos? Or what about those awesome days when you’re instructed to “send me that thing from a week ago,” “call that guy I wanted to call,” or “book me a table at that restaurant that girl said was really good,” and are then berated when you’re not able to figure out immediately what your boss is talking about? To My Assistant compiles everything that disgruntled and optimistic assistants everywhere promise NEVER TO DO when, one day, they have assistants of their own. From ridiculous requests and backhanded compliments to outright insults, and complete with helpful tips and tricks for Boss Wrangling—like what you can learn about your boss’s mood from his meal choices, how to navigate such professional minefields as requests for your opinion and interactions with your boss’s children and pets, and advanced translation techniques for incoherent e-mails and text messages—these pages are just what the underpaid masses need to survive (and laugh at) the daily injustices of life at the bottom of the totem pole.