Maggie’s blue eyes filled with tears as she looked at me with an intense gaze. “You’re an amazing boss,” she said. “You could probably be a therapist if you didn’t work in television.”
I blushed with pride and instinctively gave his hand a comforting squeeze.
As executive producer of a successful television drama department, he had given up a rare day off to rush to a coffee shop to hear their “dilemma.”
Maggie was my new creative assistant, a brilliant twenty-something graduate who had won my devotion by scattering praise like confetti.
I was a “mentor,” a “role model,” even, jokingly, “her heroine.”
As executive producer of a successful television drama department, I gave up a rare day off to rush to a coffee shop to hear my assistant’s “dilemma,” writes Kate Ruby.
And now, after a few months, she had been offered the chance to continue her studies at an Ivy League university in the United States and she couldn’t decide whether to accept or continue working for me. Although I started with clichés about “following your heart”, I soon found myself flattering and almost cajoling her into staying. Something I would later bitterly regret.
Little did I know, as I handed her a napkin to wipe away her tears, that our relationship would crumble and burn spectacularly, that the fuzzy glow I felt would turn into a sense of hurt and betrayal I never expected to feel at work.
Now, looking back, I still feel the pain of humiliation for having blindly trusted me. After all, I was a very powerful boss in a fast-paced and ruthless industry. How could I have been fooled so easily?
Older women are often encouraged to be more protective than their male counterparts, but as I later discovered, it’s an expectation that can come with risks — especially now that Gen Z is coming of age in the workplace.
More aware of their “limits” than millennials or Gen Xers, they are ultra-conscious of their role in the workplace and are prepared to push back against anything they consider an “overreach.”
Maggie had moved from the outskirts of London and was struggling to pay rent on an entry-level salary. My first misstep came when I looked at a bag of clothes under my desk that I had planned to sell on eBay.
Suddenly, I had the brilliant idea of offering them to Maggie. After all, she kept telling me how stylish I was. Soon she started coming to work in my discarded sweaters and shirts, looking more put together and professional than ever.
I must confess that I felt a small sense of pride in “helping” her.
As a bookish only child with parents who weren’t interested in books, I had always longed for a little sister. It’s hard to admit, but maybe I started to see Maggie as a little sister. Maybe I was enjoying passing on my experience too much?
But my pride was short-lived when she told me she had thrown away one of my skirts because it was “too big for me” and had given it to her roommate. “Shouldn’t I have returned it?” I groaned to myself. Looking back, I had already crossed the line.
But Maggie’s seduction routine was fine-tuned, and I wasn’t the only one in her sights. When Luke joined our team a year after Maggie (younger than me and older than her), she began to crave his attentions. At first, I was pleased to see how welcoming my protégé was (another gold star for my management skills).
But as time went on, I noticed that Luke seemed shy around me. There was none of the camaraderie that you need in a creative job.
Meanwhile, Maggie was becoming increasingly distant. She would get angry when I asked her to complete a task, and her punctuality became increasingly worse. One morning I saw her kissing her boyfriend on the street, fifteen minutes after she was supposed to be at her desk, and I found myself riding the elevator with her without apologizing.
Wanting to remain the “cool boss,” I foolishly failed to reprimand her for all this. Instead, I deluded myself into thinking that the sneering disdain she now seemed to have for many of our projects—her obvious resentment of the most menial tasks—was nothing to worry about.
Maggie was growing professionally, of course she wanted to spread her wings. Her increasingly bad attitude was… natural?
Later, during a professional interview, Luke reluctantly admitted that Maggie had warned him to “be careful” with me. Apparently, I could turn on people and tried to get too close to him.
He was so shocked that he could hardly speak. Perhaps he was afraid that whatever he said (which might be an explosion of anger and pain) might confirm his damning assessment.
As Luke confessed more about the poison Maggie had been pouring into his ear, I suddenly realized all the ways she had exposed me. She had said I had behaved inappropriately by inviting her out for a drink.
I had thought it was just a quick glass of wine to toast a job well done. True, it ended up being a couple of glasses, but I could have sworn it was she who signaled for a second round.
I could have also sworn that she was the one who started telling me about her Hinge disasters before she met her boyfriend, but the way she told it, I felt nosy.
That the diffuse glow I felt would turn into a sense of pain and betrayal I never expected to feel at work, writes Kate Ruby
I could now see, too, how she had been using her access to my journal – with its clues about my budding relationship – to try to get more personal information out of me.
The weekends in romantic destinations, the travel reservations she needed to block in my calendar, had given her a window into my life that I had never intended to open.
Now I could only hope that I had remembered correctly and had resisted his crafty urging to reveal more details. In retrospect, it seemed to me that he had been trying to get me to compromise so that he could later accuse me of having overstepped my bounds.
It was hard to confront Maggie about what she’d said to Luke, especially since he begged me not to do it again. I didn’t want to betray her trust. And I couldn’t help but think: What if Maggie repeated her lies about me to HR? Could I really stand up for myself when I had, in fact, blurred the lines with my inappropriate gifts and gossip over a glass of Pinot Grigio?
I was also deeply hurt by my protégé’s change of attitude. I had felt that our mutual affection and respect were real, but I had misunderstood it.
It turns out I’m far from the only boss with a toxic assistant.
As I shared my own experience, I was inundated with horror stories from friends.
There was the male assistant at an acting agency who had systematically seduced all the other attendees, provoking tears and recriminations, before trying his luck with a high-profile client at an event.
Or the intern at a media recruitment firm who failed to get a permanent job (because there were none available) and went to the recruitment site Glassdoor to vindictively claim that the company was the worst place to work in London.
As Maggie’s performance and attitude worsened, my fear that she would twist the story and I would end up in the line of fire continued to deter me from involving HR.
A job I once loved became a strange test of endurance. In my darkest moments, I even wondered if I should be the one to quit.
The day Maggie handed in her resignation, her face was flushed as she cheekily claimed she had gotten something “much better.”
But her triumph was matched by my relief. I confess that I recommended her enthusiastically, excited to get her off my back, and I gave her a parting gift in front of the entire office, a smile fixed on my face.
She still occasionally pops up as a contact suggestion on LinkedIn, and her rise in the industry is impressive. It’s hard not to worry that Maggie is destined to become the boss of the future.
But I don’t manipulate Maggies anymore. I’ve learned to maintain a strictly professional relationship with my younger colleagues, and as much as you want to support them, every successful woman should do the same.
Maggie’s name and some identifying details have been changed.
- Kate Ruby’s book, Everything You Have, is now available.
