Tina is a good person. Tina has done something bad. But she did the wrong thing for the right reasons and that makes it a bit less bad - doesn't it? For six years Tina has served drinks and collected dry-cleaning for a boss who spends more on lunch than Tina does on rent, and her debts are piling up. Then a blip in the expenses system offers her the opportunity to change her life, a big fat cheque that shouldn't have Tina's name on it. And her moral compass temporarily malfunctions. With wealth comes trouble, it doesn't take long for one of Tina's fellow assistants to notice and she wants in. But despite their unlimited expense accounts, with two of them playing the system, there was always going to be a limit to their luck.
Thirty-year-old Tina Fontana discovers a loophole in Titan Corporation’s expensing system when filing her boss’s expense report and pays of her $20,000 student loan debt. It snowballs and develops into a scheme as other assistants at the company figure out what Tina’s up to. The Assistants is essentially a modern-day Robin Hood tale. This is a quick and compelling read, especially, I imagine, for those working in entry-level positions.
Particularly interesting to me was the way Perri describes corporate culture in the media industry and the frustrating lives of assistants, working for the 1% for a $30,000 annual salary. (As she writes in the novel, “We were all defined by whom we assisted.”)
I was most interested in Perri’s ability to make me sympathize with Tina. At first, she enraged me and I couldn’t imagine stealing $20,000 and then continuing the scheme, even though I felt that we are similar personality-wise. (She’s very prickly—at one point she says, “How was this my life? I was supposed to be an island. Hell is other people. Hell is other people!”—and I can often empathize.) But that’s part of the charm of this book: Perri made me understand Tina and actually imagine how I could do what she did. As soon as I started thinking how easy it would be to “accidentally” embezzle from your boss, I knew this book was a winner.
