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" The idea of being an assistant for a massive Hollywood celebrity sounds pretty appealing, especially around awards season. Rubbing shoulders with Ryan Gosling and attending snazzy events\u2026 right?\u00A0 &amp;quot;I once had to go to my boss&amp;#039;s house at 8am on a Saturday, to wait in for the cable guy to turn up, purely because she didn&amp;#039;t want to sit in her own house,&amp;quot; says Lydia Whitlock, who worked as an assistant to some of Hollywood&amp;#039;s biggest names for five long years.  But what about meeting Ryan Gosling? And the snazzy events? &amp;quot;When you&amp;#039;re an assistant, red carpets are always a little bit awkward. It&amp;#039;s mainly going, &amp;#039;Oh look, there&amp;#039;s a famous person. Do you need anything? Let me help you. Can I show you where the bathroom is?&amp;#039;&amp;quot; 28-year-old Lydia, who still lives in LA, originally got into the industry through word-of-mouth while working as an assistant elsewhere in Hollywood. &amp;quot;I didn&amp;#039;t think it would be as stressful as it turned out to be!&amp;quot;  Just like the rest of us, Lydia says there&amp;#039;s a thriving network of fellow PAs who get together and moan about their day - and more specifically, their bosses - over a glass of wine.\u00A0&amp;quot;People get together to network and put faces to names, but that inevitably turns into a conversation about who has the worst boss stories. You pass on the worst ones you&amp;#039;ve heard. Some were legendary.  &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s one really, really bad story I heard from\u2026 a friend of mine. She had to go to her boss&amp;#039;s house on a Saturday and collect a fresh stool sample [I.E. poop] from his dog to take to the vet, because he didn&amp;#039;t want to do it himself.&amp;quot; Other tales were more mundane but equally awful, she says. &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s the usual doing the kids&amp;#039; homework and buying their\u00A0wives/husbands/mothers presents.\u00A0I also\u00A0knew someone who threw away a newspaper and then the boss was like, &amp;#039;What did you do with the newspaper? You threw it away? No, you have to recycle it \u2013 go out to the dumpster and go through the trash, so you can collect that newspaper and put it in the recycling.&amp;#039;&amp;quot; Yeah, rubbing shoulders with The Gos seems like a long distant memory now.  When it comes to bad bosses, Lydia has her fair share of stories as well, though. Like the boss who forced her to test the temperature of his butter every single day for several months.\u00A0 &amp;quot;I once picked up lunch for my boss and it came with a bread roll and some butter. He opened it and started screaming at me because it was too warm for his tastes. He told me that I should feel the butter before handing him his lunch, every day from now on, to make sure that it was cold enough.&amp;quot; Her stories aren&amp;#039;t all LOL anecdotes, though. One of Lydia&amp;#039;s bosses once made her miss her family Thanksgiving - one of only a handful of days off she took that year - to listen in on a conference call.  &amp;quot;I wasn&amp;#039;t speaking and the whole thing was being recorded, but I was asked to take notes. I only get to see my family maybe twice a year and I had to miss it.&amp;quot; Despite all that, Lydia doesn&amp;#039;t have any regrets and now works as a freelance writer and blogger, as well as\u00A0releasing a book based on her experiences called, To My Future Assistant: Your Foolproof Guide to Handling the Boss from Hell. Oh and that cable guy Lydia had to wait in for? &amp;quot;He turned up\u2026 eventually. He just didn&amp;#039;t have the right equipment, so I had to wait in for a second time the following weekend.&amp;quot;\u00A0 * Maps To The Stars is available on Blu-ray and DVD on 2nd February, courtesy of Entertainment One      Follow Claire on Twitter. 4 TIPS FOR DEALING WITH A NIGHTMARE BOSS KAREN BRADY&amp;#039;S CAREER ADVICE: &amp;quot;MY BOSS HATES ME&amp;quot; "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.co.uk/entertainment/news/a33034/lydia-whitlock-hollywood-assistant-real-life/>