19 Assistants Revealed The Most Bizarre Requests They've Ever Been Asked To Do, And Some Of These Are Downright Strange
Recently, we asked assistants from the BuzzFeed Community to share the wildest tasks and requests they've ever been asked to do while working. Here are some of their most memorable responses:
1.This icky clean-up request:
"I had started a job and within the first few days, a manager came to me and said that one of the team had vomited in their wastebasket and asked me to clean it up. I called maintenance. Not my job!"
—Anonymous
2.This awkward getting busy request:
"Once I had a doctor who wanted me to get him sex workers to keep him busy in between patients. Two or three a day."
—Anonymous
3.This suuuuper specific font sizing request:
"I used to work for a lawyer who handed me two printed pieces of paper and said 'make the font sizes match.' He was a senior partner so I had to wing it as best as I could."
4.This beyond the grave request:
"I worked in an admin role pretty closely with a senior VP in our company but was not his personal assistant. Yet somehow in the time I was there I was still roped into doing things like scheduling his dog's neutering service, running the guest list for his daughter's wedding, and craziest of all, designing the headstone for his mother's grave (who I had never met btw). Not kidding at all. I designed the headstone of his mother's grave on freaking PowerPoint and emailed it to the stone company that made it. Talk about outside my job description."
5.This cat lover request:
"My first job as a PA, my boss called me at 7 a.m. to come to his house (45 minutes away) to put his cat in the cat basket because 'he needs to go to the vet and he likes you more than me.' The vet was five minutes from his house. I didn't do it and started applying for other jobs that day."
6.This post-employment carpet cleaning request:
"While working as a legal assistant I had one lawyer boss who was constantly challenging me. On my last day at the firm (Friday) he called me into his office and asked if I could leave my keys for the carpet cleaners scheduled to come the next day (Saturday). I told him that I had already handed them in to HR because this was my last day.
He then asked if the other assistant could leave her keys. I told him that she had already left for the day. He didn't say anything else, so I left his office and went home at the end of the day, no longer employed there. The next morning (Saturday), I got an angry phone call from the same lawyer boss demanding an explanation as to where I was. I was SUPPOSED to be at the office to let in the carpet cleaners!
When I recounted our conversation of the previous day, he acted like he had no recollection of it. I would be lying if I said he didn't call me a few weeks later with a similar delusional request."
—Anonymous
7.This wild attempt to skip rush hour request:
"My boss was stuck in traffic (he had a driver) in a major city on the way to his private aircraft. He was tired of waiting and asked if I could get a helicopter to pick him up from traffic and take him to his aircraft. I thought he was joking but he was dead serious. He didn't get a helicopter."
—Anonymous
8.This wacky "take a journey around the city" request:
"I was interning (as an unpaid assistant) for a non-profit arts/filmmaker group in NYC. My boss was 'from the industry' so she got away with a lot of diva behavior. One morning, she came in extremely hungover saying she had lost her shoes the night before and I had to find them. Not only was I new to the city, this was in 2010.
She couldn't remember where she went but she was pretty sure she had checked into Foursquare most of the night. I spent most of the day following her check-ins with printed MapQuest directions but couldn't find the shoes. I did find her sunglasses she didn't know she left behind. When I came back empty-handed, she was angry. Eventually one of her friends texted her that she had her shoes. She never apologized."
—Anonymous
9.This seemingly simple pencil sharpening request:
"Early in my career I was working for a general contractor. It was a very lighthearted place and we joked around a lot. One day I was walking to the printer and one of the project managers asked me to sharpen his pencil. Of course I thought he was joking and laughed it off. He was dead serious. I did not sharpen his pencil and he didn't speak to me for a week. What a week!"
10.This lazy OOO message request:
"I work in IT. Once we had an administrative assistant ask us to go in on the backend and apply an out of office reply on her boss' email. The kicker is that the boss asked her to do this rather than doing it herself. The entitlement blew my mind."
11.This vasectomy appointment request:
"Definitely not intriguing, but I found it odd. I'm a real estate assistant and personal assistant to the broker in charge. My boss has me call and schedule her appointments and perform other typical tasks that an assistant would do. However, about six months into working here, she asked me to call and schedule her husband's vasectomy. Yes, HIS vasectomy. She went into this long speech about how he is finally having it done. It's probably not the most bizarre thing, but now every time I see him, all I can think about is, 'I scheduled your vasectomy.'"
—Anonymous
12.This post-surgery patient request:
"My old boss had me pick up his wife after her facelift surgery. I had to help her get dressed, get her to my car (while she still had drains in her face), stop at the pharmacy for her prescriptions, take her home, get her to bed, and make sure she had her water, pills, and cellphone before she would let me leave and go to the office."
—Anonymous
13.This penny-pinching tire request:
"He wanted me to buy four tires for his son's car in the least unsafe neighborhood about 40 miles away from our offices. I found the exact same tires for 16 cents more about a mile from our office, and he refused to allow me to go there. So I paid the 16 cents myself and bought the tires with his credit card. He reminded me that's why he's a millionaire and I'm not. Yeah, but I'm still alive and not shot either!"
—Anonymous
14.This petty noise-cancelling request:
"When my boss wanted me to go downstairs and ask the maintenance men to stop using the leaf blowers because it was annoying them. Yeah...I didn't go do that."
—Anonymous
15.This impromptu babysitting request:
"I was asked to babysit my boss' wife's four kids while he and his wife attended couples counseling. I quit shortly thereafter."
—Anonymous
16.This post-op cream application request:
"My boss had a bunch of suspicious moles removed and asked me to put antibiotic ointment on the spots. I refused since he was already standing in his office in only his underwear."
—Anonymous
17.This pretty gross toilet request:
"I was once asked to flush the toilet after my boss's friend because they couldn't wait to go to lunch. The toilet in the building we worked in took a really long time to fill. Instead of being reasonable, my boss asked me to take care of her friend's business for her whilst they went to lunch. I was an assistant in a law firm at the time."
—Anonymous
18.This worn-in shoes request:
"I had a boss suggest I wear his new leather shoes in to soften them for him."
—Anonymous
19.Finally, this over-the-top and entirely shocking horse request:
BET Plus / Via giphy.com
"The owner of the company had horses as a hobby. I show up one morning to see some kind of cooler on my desk that he wanted me to get ready for shipping. It was horse semen."
—Anonymous
Past and present assistants, what other strange requests would you add to this list? Share yours in the comments!
Note: Some responses have been edited for length and/or clarity.
