Personal assistant

I have been thinking about the power exchange in a new way lately. I have been thinking about it in terms of profiling the types of people or perhaps I should say, personalities, who are best suited to, or might desire a power exchange.

For reasons that should be obvious to you it is not always easy to give examples as they pertain to my own life. It just is not politic! So, I am going to draw on my past. I have already catalogued my working relationship with a dominant man. I did that right at the beginning of my online journaling when I described my working life dynamic back on Deity’s blog.

Those years of being a Personal Assistant were important in preparing me to live a lifetime with a dominant man. Of course, my job was about providing efficiency to his office but the real work took place within the dynamic wherein he was the boss of the show and I was his helpmate. I remember certain words and conversations now and realize their importance.

I remember him returning from a board meeting triumphant and saying, “Vesta, I got everything I wanted!” “Terrific,” I replied. Another time he returned and said, “They didn’t agree to (whatever).” Then it was my turn to say, “Oh dear!” and listen to him tell me how such and such was such a snivelling bastard or words to that effect.

On one occasion he was bemoaning the fact that the Chairman was such a moron and why did he have to suffer such fools, and so on. I listened quietly and patiently, as always and then I said,

“But, think about it. You’ve got the support of the entire board. You run the show. And, you know that you can convince Geoffrey of anything. You know you have that under your control.”

He brightened up. I was quite right, of course. He knew how to smooth talk anyone and the Chairman was not a difficult or divisive or contrary man at all.

On another occasion, he did something a wee bit naughty and the head of another organisation called him on it. He rang and complained. He got off the phone and went into a guilt/defensive mode and kinda obsessed about that. I listened. Always. Listened. Then, I said,

“It’s a one day wonder. Tomorrow, it will be old news. Over.”

It seemed to snap him out of it. He got over it.

One time, the receptionist, a girl of whom he was fond, asked for an appointment to see him and she put forward her case as to why she should get a salary increase. This fazed him. He wasn’t in control. She was asking for something and it didn’t give him a chance to be generous. It was as if he had overlooked something or mistreated her and it couldn’t stand. He denied her request. But, immediately after he said to me that he couldn’t understand why she would do it. He had wanted to be generous but she had not gone about it the right way. It frustrated him.

Another day, a man came into this office just before lunch with an idea. It was not necessarily a bad idea. I am sure the man thought he was doing him a favour by offering the idea. But, the idea had been presented when he had something else on his mind and he had done it immediately before lunch. It did not go well.

He opened our adjoining door and said, “What sort of an idiot would approach me with a new idea immediately before I eat my lunch??!! Never do that, Vesta. Never, ever ask me for anything before lunch. If you want to ask a man for something, do it when he is well fed.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said.

I could go on and on.

The man I worked for wanted contol . He wanted to be right. He loathed the idea of making a mistake.

One day, I was in the car when the driver, who I knew well, was dropping my boss off at an appointment. I remember telling him something and I remember him responding to me, just before he got out of the car.

“Just do your best, Vesta. Just do your best."

We drove away and the driver, who only spoke when he had something important to say said,

“What a joke! As if your best would ever be good enough for him.”

Of everyone in the organisation, he was most hard on himself. The high standards he asked of everyone else in the organisation were simply indicative of the standards he applied to himself.

Was I sometimes frustrated with him? Of course! I was half his age and if something was not done exactly right, I got it in the ear.

He would never apologize for his outbursts per se but he did make up in his own way. Often, it was just to be there. He’d stand by me as I typed, furious with him underneath the surface, and he would try to impart the vibe that he was over his outburst and felt a tad sorry now. He never meant to have a tantrum. It was just his perfectionism; his need for control that got in the way.

He managed to create an enormous amount of anxiety in the air at times; something that I find very hard to be around. At those times, I would look into the diary and see that he had an appointment out of the office in a hour’s time perhaps and I’d hang onto that thought; that in a hour I could breathe again; in a hour I could cleanse myself from this dominant, control hungry, perfectionist dynamo.

Of course, it was not always like this. He could be quite relaxed on occasion and a bit of a devil. He liked to mimic people; to tell jokes, to sing tunes from musicals and some afternoons were really a delight. He would often call me into his office; sometimes just to collect a book from the bookshelves rather than walk around himself. “Here is your book, m’Lord,” I would say and he would smile a little sheepishly. “Why bark myself when I have a dog?” he might retort if feeling particularly cheeky. “Why indeed?” I would reply.

He liked the fact that he could get away with such things with me. I just wasn’t quick to bite and I think he liked that. It played into his desire for control that his Personal Assistant should be so independent of spirit on the inside but so controlled on the outside, I think.

What I am trying to say is that he was who he was: a dominant man: bright, able, charming, ambitious, determined. He wanted control and he controlled himself so that he could obtain control. If you were going to deal with him, and we all had to, after all, you had to recognize that fact and take the good out of the situation. Attempting to wrestle control from him was just a bad idea.

One day when he was away overseas, the Advertising Manager asked if I would be in an advertisement and I agreed. I did not ask my boss because I had a feeling that he would not agree. When he returned, he was in a rage about it and had the Advertising people can the photos. I remember being very hurt about that. At the time I figured he thought me not good enough to be in the advertising. I came to realize that if I were in the photos, it was a threat to him. Would I continue on as his Personal Assistant if I had another avenue of employment?

This was confirmed to me in later days when I asked to be transferred to the Training Department. Why on earth would I want to do that job, he asked, when I was involved with every last decision on the top level in his office? Request denied: through stupidity.

Perhaps on a sub-conscious level I am attracted to men who seek control. I have certainly been surrounded by them all my life so it must be true. It is too much of a co-incidence to not be true. I see their soft underbelly and I feel a warmth towards them. For as difficult as they can be; they can be soft and sweet. I see that. Men who seek control are complex; driven by desires they do not entirely understand themselves.

One day, late in his life, he was interviewed about his life and the interviewer asked him about a painting on the wall. He said he had bought it because it reminded him of his mother. He always spoke so endearingly of her and he told the interviewer that she was a very giving woman; that he was sorry that he had caused her so much grief.

I remember him telling me that many years after he left school he ran into some teacher of his who had been a real sadist and apparently he said to himself, “My god, I used to be so frightened of you and look at you now!”

I try to keep my eyes open now; my antenna up. I try to calm myself and soothe the beast by looking for the heart of gold; the reasons for the drive within. Perhaps, I am destined to always be “the personal assistant”.