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"At my first job, I was the assistant to the editor-in-chief of a website. The company was small but growing, and I was the first assistant he\u2014or any of the senior staff\u2014ever had. Unfortunately, quite a few of those senior staff members heard &amp;quot;he&amp;#39;s getting an assistant&amp;quot; followed by Oprah&amp;#39;s voice saying, &amp;quot;and YOU get an assistant, and YOU get an assistant!&amp;quot;\n\nIn other words, several other people thought that my hiring meant they could all ask me to do work for them, and I was too scared to say no. I was lucky enough to have an awesome boss who told everyone to step off, but I learned an important lesson: There&amp;#39;s no shame in asking people at work to clarify what they do, who they answer to, and where you fit into it all. Here are some things to keep in mind as you navigate your first professional role.\n\nIf your title is &amp;quot;assistant to Person X,&amp;quot; you should be working for Person X.\n\nAs an assistant to one specific person, you should assume that he or she will set your priorities, and that they will be the main focus of your time at the office. Otherwise, they wouldn&amp;#39;t have hired a full-time assistant, right?\n\nWhen it comes to assisting others, let your boss be the one to give out the orders. If she specifically asks you to help out a new hire or support a team member visiting from another office for a few days, do it. But if a random ecutive comes up to you and starts demanding that you put together a bunch of spreadsheets for him, check with your boss before saying anything.\n\nIf this becomes a regular issue, direct the wayward ecutive to your boss and cut yourself out of the equation. It was amazing how quickly &amp;quot;Theo,&amp;quot; a VP at the website, left me alone when I suggested that he email my boss his list of tasks for me.\n\nThe trick was mastering this response: &amp;quot;My boss sets my priorities for the day each morning. Will you send her a list of everything you&amp;#39;d like me to work on?&amp;quot; Once I learned it, that was the end of Theo trying to make me do extra work for free. He knew it was much easier to take advantage of a 22-year-old assistant than it was to take advantage of the head of the company.\n\nIf your title is &amp;quot;assistant to Department Y,&amp;quot; then you have a slightly different challenge.\n\nWorking for a group of people means you will be expected to set your own priorities. However, you&amp;#39;ll figure out pretty quickly that certain projects are more important than others or that some employees need more help. Unfortunately, in these situations, everyone thinks their task is the most urgent. So how do you deal?\n\nFirst of all, there&amp;#39;s definitely a learning curve. As you&amp;#39;re settling in, you&amp;#39;ll start to learn which stuff matters the most to your company. (Hint: It&amp;#39;s usually the thing that helps them make the most money.) If you&amp;#39;re struggling to discern that though, set up a meeting with your direct manager and have them map it out for you. Part of a boss&amp;#39;s job is to help their employees prioritize.\n\nAlso important: Make the calendar your new best friend. If you know when a huge board meeting or important presentation is coming up, you can deal with the deluge of requests by spreading the work out over a few days instead of stressing out and having to handle everything at once. You don&amp;#39;t win an award if you stay until 10 p.m. If you&amp;#39;re not being paid overtime, then plan ahead and figure out how to get everything done within your official work hours so you can still do important things like sleeping and having a life.\n\nWorking for multiple people\u2014especially if there are multiple strong personalities\u2014requires an ability to say &amp;#39;no,&amp;#39; or at least &amp;#39;not right now.&amp;#39; When you&amp;#39;re in the middle of a huge project and somebody tries to dump a pile of work on your desk, it&amp;#39;s totally fine to say something like, &amp;quot;Hey, my number-one priority is this project. If you can wait until tomorrow morning for me to handle this, that&amp;#39;s fine. Otherwise, we&amp;#39;ll need a plan B.&amp;quot; Most people will appreciate the heads up. It&amp;#39;s when you say, &amp;quot;OK, I&amp;#39;ll do this&amp;quot; and then don&amp;#39;t get to it right away that people start to freak out.\n\nIn general, it&amp;#39;s all about setting a precedent.\n\nThere&amp;#39;s one unfortunate reality of being the newest and most junior person in the office: Someone will try to take advantage of you at some point, even if they&amp;#39;re not doing it on purpose. Whether you&amp;#39;re assisting one person or many, the best way to keep other people foisting their work off on you is to be firm from the start.\n\nWhen you&amp;#39;re starting a new job, you&amp;#39;ll probably be in people-pleasing mode, but be wary of colleagues who try to exploit the most recent, and most vulnerable, hire. It&amp;#39;s simple, really: If you say yes the first couple of times a co-worker asks for &amp;quot;a favor,&amp;quot; it becomes harder and harder to say no the next time. Being polite but honest is the best route from the very beginning. Don&amp;#39;t let a breaking point come\u2014prevent one from ever existing."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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