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.”
Denne historien er fra April 26 - May 9, 2021-utgaven av New York magazine.
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Denne historien er fra April 26 - May 9, 2021-utgaven av New York magazine.
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Early and Often: David Freedlander - Momentum vs. Machine The Trump and Harris campaigns battle it out for every last vote.
WIth two weeks left to go, the contours of the 2024 presidential election are clear: Both campaigns need voters who usually don’t vote, and Kamala Harris needs to bring the Democratic coalition, including its Trump-curious members, back home.While the Republican side plans to spend the remaining days of the contest trying to lure low-propensity voters to the polls, the Harris team will attempt to persuade voters of color to return to its side and will try to increase numbers among white voters in previously red suburbs.
Drowning in Slop - A thriving underground economy is clogging the internet with AI garbage-and it's only going to get worse.
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The City Politic- The Other Eric Adams Scandal The NYPD shot a fare evader, a cop, and two bystanders. He defends it.
On Sunday, September 15, Derell Mickles hopped a turnstile, got asked to leave by cops, then entered the subway again ten minutes later through an emergency exit. This was at the Sutter Avenue L station, out by his mother's house, five stops from the end of the line. Police said they noticed he was holding a folded knife. They followed him up the stairs to the elevated train, asking him 38 times to drop the weapon.
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What We Do in the Shadows is coming to an end. Its idiosyncratic brand of comedy may be too.
