Name: Rennie
Location: Bran, Romania
It’s interesting, when I think about it, it’s like a lot of the jobs I’ve had since I started working really prepared me for this one.
I work as a personal assistant. It’s a hard job to describe, because it’s a little bit of everything. I work out of my employer’s home, which isn’t unusual in this kind of profession. I have a furnished room on-site, it’s one of the better perks of the job, honestly, his home is pretty remarkable. But it does mean that I’m sometimes responsible for tasks that some personal assistants might find beneath them, janitorial work, or taking care of his pets. I don’t mind, though, I enjoy the work, though pest control is something I could probably live without, if I had my druthers.
I’ve always been a person who enjoyed performing a service. I didn’t go to college, but I’ve worked as a clerk a bunch of times, I’ve worked as an office assistant, I’ve worked as a janitor, I even briefly once worked in a cemetery. It’s interesting, when I think about it, it’s like a lot of the jobs I’ve had since I started working really prepared me for this one. My employer’s a really busy guy, so I’m pretty self-directed most of the time. I feel like we’ve got a working relationship where he doesn’t even have to say what he needs and I can kind of, I don’t know, intuit it, I guess? It’s almost like I can hear him in my head, but, not in, like, an overbearing way.
I work a lot of odd hours. The thing about live-in or on-site jobs is that you’re always kind of on-call, I guess? I get plenty of downtime, it’s not like my employer is awake at all hours or anything, but my actual tasks can be a little erratic. We tend to be on opposite schedules a lot, he has meetings that can go pretty late at night, so I do a lot of errands and cleaning and appointments during the day. There are plenty of times I’ll need to be out late to help him with something, but that’s just sort of the nature of the beast. It’s a lot easier to do this kind of work when you’ve got living quarters on-site, it’d be a lot harder if I had to drive up from town at all hours.
I spend a lot of time setting up meetings, to be honest. My employer’s been in this community a long time, which is good and bad for him. If you live anywhere long enough, I feel like you’ll eventually ruffle someone’s feathers, and I think that happens a lot more with, like, people of means. As a result, I go into town pretty often to talk to people around the community that my employer would like to meet with, for whatever reason. Sometimes it’s business related, sometimes it’s not, it’s not really my job to ask about that, usually. But it’s a job I take really seriously – sometimes, my employer’s livelihood can depend on a meeting at the right time, and so I’ve learned to be pretty persuasive.
Like, spiders eat bugs, right? Birds eat spiders, you know? The wolves will eat anything.
Maybe the weirdest thing about working an on-site, live-in job like this is the kitchen, you’re almost never on the same meal schedule, so you end up having to just sort of make do with what you find around. But I manage to fend for myself.
So, yeah, the pest control thing. The thing you have to understand is that this is an old, old place. I’m not even sure how old my employer’s home is, to be honest. He’s been here a long time, but it was here for a long time before him, too. The downside to that is that we’ve got all kinds of bugs and critters around, all the time. Bugs, spiders, birds up in the rafters. We’re in a rural area, so sometimes we even get wolves on the property. Like I said, my employer has a lot of meetings here, so keeping on top of the bugs is a pretty serious responsibility. It’s weird, though, like, I feel like there’s a whole ecosystem at work that you can make work for you if you spend enough time working on it. Like, spiders eat bugs, right? Birds eat spiders, you know? The wolves will eat anything. What I’ve been working on for the last few years is trying to figure out how to get the spiders to eat the bugs and the birds to eat the spiders. I’m not sure I’ll try with the wolves, to be honest, I stay inside when I hear them around, and just try to make sure we don’t have anything laying around to attract them. I’ve never gotten a great look, but they look pretty big.
I think the hardest thing is… just getting recognition for my work. My employer’s a very important person, so it’s not like I want a trophy or anything. But he’s a pretty demanding boss, and I feel like I work really hard to support him, and personal assistants just don’t really get a lot of recognition. I think there’s something about being so familiar that my employer just looks past your efforts because he has become accustomed to them. It’s okay, though, it’s not like it drives me crazy or anything, it’s just something I think about sometimes. I mean, I’ve helped him dress for meetings — this isn’t a weird thing, this is pretty normal for a personal assistant job — and sometimes, when he’s looking in the mirror, it’s like he doesn’t even see himself, so how could he see me, you know?
I’m getting valuable life experience here that will eventually just set me up for, well, basically forever.
Realistically, I took this job because there’s just so much I want to learn from the master, and I think he really has a lot to offer me. He has so much more life experience than I do, my life’s been pretty small. He doesn’t have a lot of time for me now, but I can tell that one day, he’ll be able to share so much more with me, and, you know, all this petty stuff like the pest control or setting up meetings or cleaning up after the meetings, like, none of that matters, right? I feel like I’m getting valuable life experience here that will eventually just set me up for, well, basically forever.
GOLIKEHELLMACHINE 