I vow not to make you organize my dates, repair my shirts or test my fake tan: Former Hollywood PA hits back at ex-bosses in book of pledges to her future assistant

By Daily Mail Reporter

PUBLISHED: 15:08 EST, 19 September 2013 | UPDATED: 18:21 EST, 19 September 2013

Fashion industry assistants got their ultimate redemption when Lauren Weisberger’s The Devil Wears Prada was released in 2003. And now Hollywood has finally gotten its own version with Lydia Whitlock’s To My Assistant: Things I’ll Never Do to You, But Many Other Crazy Bosses Will.

Ms Whitlock, a 27-year-old former Hollywood assistant who resides in Los Angeles, penned the book as an adaptation of her two-year running blog, Tomyassistant.com.

Instead of a tell-all, the title is formatted as a humorous collection of pledges to the world's future assistants. She tells her future PAs that she will never have them wait for the cable guy, schedule her dates, or monitor her workouts.

Real life: Lydia Whitlock says that her five combined assistantships were 'kind of like grad school'

The book was released in the United States this April, but found its way onto UK booksellers’ shelves for the first time last Thursday.

All of the book’s anecdotes ‘are based on things I had experienced during my time as an assistant,’ Ms Whitlock told MailOnline by phone.

Ms Whitlock’s book, which is dedicated to her parents ‘who helped me build the skills to get a terrible job and the confidence to leave it,’ is filled with infographics and sharp humor to help future assistants brace themselves for their new jobs. There are chapters on patience, verbal communication, the telephone, and basic human decency.

The book outlines many common assistant tasks that Whitlock would never expect her PA's to do. 'I will not expect you to keep a sewing kit and your desk so that you can sew buttons back onto my shirts,' she writes.

'I will not accuse you of having bedbugs just because you managed to get a mosquito bite on your arm during the winter,' reads another quip.

Ms Whitlock says that she ‘was an assistant in a number of places [in Hollywood], about five.'

‘I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do in the entertainment industry and once I realized the job my boss had is one I didn’t want I’d move on to a new one—it was kind of like grad school,’ she said of her credentials.

While Ms Whitlock has decided to conceal all of her former boss’ identities because she ‘doesn’t want to reflect poorly on them, they were really good companies,’ she did stress that one was a bit upset by the release of her book.

‘I think they thought it was all about them when in fact it really wasn’t,’ she explained, ‘which I guess is what happens when you are kind of narcissistic.’

She added that ‘Most of the response has been “This is really funny, great job, I’m really proud of you.”’

Ms Whitlock admitted that she is fully aware of the illusions surrounding her former life as a Hollywood assistant. ‘A lot of people assume that by being an assistant in Hollywood you are going to be living a glamorous lifestyle and become BFF with your favorite actor,’ she said.

Shared experiences: To My Assistant is something of a Hollywood answer to hit 2003 book The Devil Wears Prada, adapted into a 2006 movie starring Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep

‘You do get to go to premieres from time to time but you are dressed in something from Forever 21, standing awkwardly in the corner while the glamour is all around you. And you do get to talk to famous people on the phone, but only to say “please hold the line for a moment.”’

Ms Whitlock says that, however strenuous, her time as an assistant was not as hard as others’. She had to do ‘really strange research tasks on the Internet,’ and ‘wait for the cable guy at my boss’s home because they didn’t want to sit and wait for them.’

But her tasks were ‘more mundane—I had friends who had to take up a stool sample from their boss’s dog, and another had to test their boss’s shower during the day because he thought it was leaking.

For posterity: Lydia Whitlock's new book acts as a self-help primer for future Hollywood assistants

All the while Ms Whitlock definitely wants ‘to stay in the entertainment industry… I love watching movies and I love making movies.’

She is unconcerned that her book may impede future employers from hiring her. ‘I think if I wanted to go into something on the executive side, for sure it’s pretty impossible to get one of those jobs unless you are an assistant.

I think I want to work on the more creative side of things though, the writing and whatnot.’

She hopes that her book, besides helping assistants, will help people in dire moods ‘laugh about how another person’s day could be so much worse than yours.’