What Was The Office? – 4. The Relationships Were Deliciously Complex

In those pre-cell days, the smallest personal revelation felt like making noise in a bathroom or having sex within other people’s hearing

1960: The offices of Bankers Trust.

WORKING AT: A DOWNTOWN START-UP, 2010s

The Lowliest Assistant Could Wield Secret Power

By Molly Young

One afternoon, I ran into Emily in the office kitchen. Emily was the executive assistant to the CEO of the company in downtown New York where we worked. Like all of the CEO’s assistants past and future, she was offensively overqualified for her position (in her case: double major at an Ivy League school, fluency in four languages).

It was 11:30 a.m. when I found her maneuvering a cake out of the refrigerator and onto a stand. There was a board meeting that day. Emily (a pseudonym) had somehow figured out that it was a key investor’s birthday—and that the investor followed a vegan, gluten-free diet and disliked chocolate. She had obtained a vanilla cake meeting the above requirements as well as a glass stand in the precise Pantone shade that was our company’s color, and she had coordinated with the office facilities staff to have the cake positioned at the end of the board’s private lunch buffet as a surprise.

The goodwill generated by this gesture would accrue to her boss, the CEO, which was Emily’s intention and, in fact, her job. “But how did you know to do all that?” I asked, once she’d gotten the cake on its pedestal. She erased a smear of errant frosting with a Q-tip.

“Oh, you know.”