Top EA horror stories? I could use a laugh - I know we all have one! Early in my career especially

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My biggest/best: sending my boss to the wrong airport. He missed his flight and meeting with his biggest client. I could/should have been fired. He told me he thought I was wrong but trusted me so much he didn’t question. Thankfully we had a great relationship.

Other: witnessing an MD, who was a bully, slam his office door so hard it jammed and couldn’t be opened. He was trapped until Facilities came up with a crow bar to pry it open. Those of us in the cubes nearly wet ourselves from (discretely) laughing.

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Then there was the flight cancellation that caused the middle seat incident of 2013.

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Same! My boss told my team lead I did it on purpose. “She put me on coach in a middle seat!” No sir, you changed your flight an hour before take off and it was the only seat. It was also not in business class policy.

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I have a partner call me at 11pm at night saying the hotel put him in a 2 queen room instead of a king….. 🤨

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In my past company there was this EXE Who told his assistant he wanted to know how much the seat went back on every single airplane he was about to board. She said it was impossible and put a ruler in his backpack and told him whenever he traveled to recline the seat, measure it and let her know so that she could start a spreadsheet. Her response was the BEST!

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He never asked her the question again 😂

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PwC1, you just reminded me: an ECD I worked for, also a bully, emailed me from his flight enroute to London to complain that his personal TV was broken.

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I supported a Partner at a Big4 who would call me at work/home/cell, no matter the time, to complain if he wasn’t upgraded, if his flight was delayed/canceled. He basically felt by calling me, I’d somehow be able to magically fix it. Last straw was him calling me at home and leaving a message at 2am.
I showed up following day, went into his office and told him I would gladly fly him anywhere he wanted, at any time he wanted if he’d pay for me to go to flight school.

He never called me to complain ever again.

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There is a partner that requires all car services to clean their vehicles before she gets in and always brings her dog. Always complains after that it wasn’t clean.

Another wanted some kind of vegetarian charcuterie set up in every single hotel room and would never eat it. Her EA had to do a full assessment of the type of airplane and it’s set up before he offered it to her. 

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Where do I start … first time I arranged meet & greet for a partner at O’Hare, someone else claimed the ride (that was before Uber) Partner missed the client meeting … used a Marriott Platinum override for hotel room in a sold out hotel, they put the partner up in an oversized closet with a roll away bed … I could go on for hours!

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Oh I had just started working with a firm. I was just assigned a new desk and I recall it was late. the phone was not working and I was anxiously awaiting for a phone call from my military son who was about to ship out overseas. I did not want to miss that call and that’s the only number he had to call me. I remember some man walking around and he heard me complaining out loud. I was furious and I said what kind of company doesn’t have a working phone little did I know that I was talking to the vice chair

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Question: are there more horror stories around female or male execs? My experiences are in advertiding and PR, so I'm also curious about other sectors.

Well, I worked in investment banking for years, and now advertising for about 11. I’ve got stories for both genders.

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I had a CEO call me from the airport terminal screaming at me because the plane ended up parking at the international terminal rather than the domestic and he had to walk too far. He said “from now on I want you to tell me what gate we are going to park in BEFORE we land”. I didn’t bother to tell him that they don’t assign the gate until the plane lands.

I also once worked for a Partner who called me from his hotel in Antigua to tell me that he hadn’t received the fax I sent him. He dialed 11 digits, internationally to tell me this when all he had to do was hit 0. And it turned out the fax was in his room the whole time, he just didn’t “get to that part of the room very often”. Lol

Is he not smart enough to figure out about taking a shuttle to get from one terminal to another since he complained it was a long walk?? Yes you can find out what gate they will be landing but every now and then they change arrival gates because of one reason or another

Reading all these horror stories, I realise working for a tech company os great as execs are very rarely divas. That said , I once supported an MD in a beauty brand company and she was absolutely cray-cray. I would put everything in her agenda, it was always kept very tidy... She insisted on only using a paper agenda so obviously there were meeting clashes. She would wend me photos of her paper agenda to recooy on the online one but she had a terrible handwriting which she expected me to understand.. recipe for disaster

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