How to Cut a Perfect Lime Wedge and Other Important Life Lessons I Learned as an Assistant
by Camille Perri (Guest Author)
When I had to slice my first lime professionally, I was at a loss. I’d never worked as a bartender; I’d never worked in a kitchen. I did however have a master’s degree, and that had to count for something.
According to the Occupational Outlook Handbook — which I’d stumbled upon when googling “What do assistants do?” a day or two before I started my new job as the assistant to an editor in chief at a men’s magazine — my main duties would include answering phones and taking messages, transferring calls; scheduling appointments and updating calendars; arranging meetings; handling incoming and outgoing mail; preparing memos, invoices, or other reports; editing documents; maintaining databases and filing systems; and performing basic bookkeeping.
Nowhere was there mention of citrus. And nary a word regarding after-hours staff meetings involving fine tequila.
I knew from research I’d conducted by streaming The Devil Wears Prada on Netflix, that my new position would require high-level support to a powerful, demanding person who might challenge me with impossible tasks and humiliating treatment. So I really needed to not eff this up, or my boss might launch into a tirade, not about the provenance of cerulean blue, but the egregiousness of a botched wedge of lime.
Staring down at the yellowish green fruit on the makeshift paper-plate cutting board I’d constructed between our office sink and the Flavia coffee machine, I fiddled the butter knife in my hand and began to panic. What was wrong with me that I didn’t already know the proper way to slice a lime?
This had been my biggest fear when I took this job. That I would fail at accomplishing some simple task, revealing to all that I didn’t actually know anything about anything, that on the outside I may have been a twenty-nine year old with a solid education, but on the inside I was a hot mess who’d had a super rough “Saturn return,” and was just trying to get her shit together.
My resume and personal life appeared normal enough. I grew up on Long Island, went to NYU, moved to Brooklyn, got a master’s degree in library science, worked as a librarian for a few years. But for most of that time I was wracked by anxiety and depression so severe that I was convinced I was turning out to be less of a person than other people. In spite of the markers of adulthood I’d seemingly ticked off, I knew the truth — that I was a textbook case of arrested development.
When I was a kid, resistant to doing kid things like going to a friend’s house or flat out refusing to attend class trips, my mother would yell, You can’t be a hermit! In adolescence it only got worse, and in early adulthood, what I believe most drew me to becoming a librarian was the familiarity of it. I’d always felt safe and at ease among the stacks of the public library, like a tiny literary hermit crab quietly doing its thing.
When I started interning at a few lit magazines — because I knew I wanted to write and thought this would be the best way to learn how it all worked — I never expected that it would lead to an opportunity to work at a big time glossy magazine with a robust literary history. As the assistant to a man I considered to be a genius, no less! A man who certainly deserved his limes sliced properly.
This man of men had been tricked. By hiring me. Me of the half-lived life, of declining invitations, of going to the same three restaurants and always ordering the same thing, of never knowing which direction I’m walking because I’m always paying attention to the wrong thing, of sometimes getting so nervous while speaking that I stutter.
And now this would be it, after only a week of working here in this sleek glass tower with its recycled rainwater waterfall and a cafeteria where at snack time you could make your own hot-fudge sundae — this lime was going to out me. It was going to blow my spot.
For the record, an assistant’s main job, which the Occupational Outlook Handbook somehow missed, is to think on ones feet. To figure it out.
On my first day, when ordering lunch for my boss he asked for a Saminterybox. I nodded confidently and returned to my desk to sweat bullets. What the heck was a Saminterybox? I scoured the online menu to no avail. Perhaps it was a special off-menu dish? If I just said the word Saminterybox on the phone, would they understand? Then it hit me: A salmon teriyaki bento box! I’d triumphed. I figured out what the hell my boss was talking about without having to bother him by asking for clarification.
This sort of thing turned out to be my main purpose each day — and it suited me. The mundane tasks that may have bored someone else to tears were new and exciting for me to tackle. So what if I was a thirty-year-old assistant who was just now figuring out the intricacies of dry-cleaning? For me, just being there in that glass tower was a huge accomplishment. Like the faded poster in my childhood psychologist’s office said, Success isn’t measured by the heights attained but by the depths from which one started. In other words, the important part was that I was learning things. It didn’t matter if I was learning them way later than I should have, or felt I should have. I was figuring out how to be a functional, capable, normal person and that was enough.
The other essential element to being an assistant that the Occupational Outlook Handbook failed to mention is this: You have an unprecedented view of how this powerful person conducts business, manages a staff, relates to his family, achieves work-life balance — you name it. If you were seeking a role model, and you’re lucky enough that your boss isn’t a total dick, you’ve found one. If your boss has values, integrity — watch and learn. Forget reading the Seven Habits of Highly Successful People.
Try keeping a highly successful person’s calendar, or proofreading his eloquently composed thank-you notes. By doing these things for my boss, I now know how to do them for myself. Take that, arrested development.
As for that lime, I looked it up. Here’s what you do: Cut it in half along its longest side. Then cut a slit on the inside of each half, perpendicular to the direction you cut the lime in half and not so deep that you pierce the skin from the inside. Place the half lime flat side down and cut three or four wedges perpendicular to the slit you made. These wedges can now be placed on the rim of a glass so the rim fits perfectly into the slit in the wedge.
Now every time I fix myself a glass of tequila with lime I think of my former boss. I appreciate the fact that even before I did, he knew I had it in me — that I’d rise to the challenge of cutting limes and whatever else a fully lived adulthood would throw my way. I thank him in a silent toast before bringing the citrusy drink to my lips and swallowing it down. It tastes like success.
Until recently, Camille Perri was Books Editor at Large for Cosmopolitan. Prior to that, she served as Assistant Editor and Books Consultant at Esquire. Earlier in her career, Perri was a ghostwriter of young adult novels, a fiction reader for The Paris Review, a reference librarian, and, of course, an assistant. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from New York University and a Master of Library Science degree from Queens College. Her newest book The Assistants is out May 3 and available here!
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