When an administrative assistant realized spreadsheets were funnier than comedy clubs

Origin Story: How a Master’s Degree Became a Liability

Paige Shivers didn’t choose this career. Careers choose you. Usually while you’re sitting at a desk, updating spreadsheets that could have been an email, wondering what your guidance counselor meant when she said “follow your passion.”

Paige’s passion was organizational efficiency. What she got was an administrative assistant position at a university. Which is the professional equivalent of being handed a flamethrower and asked to organize a library.

Here’s what the job description didn’t mention: administrative work is psychology, mind reading, and mime acting combined. You’re constantly solving problems nobody admits exist while watching six-figure executives ask why their password keeps getting reset. (It’s because you’re typing it in the login field, Keith. The field that says “password,” not “random numbers I’ll remember.”)

“I have a master’s degree,” Paige wrote in her diary that first month. “Today I alphabetized files nobody will ever see while a football coach explained why his $2 million salary was insufficient compensation for teaching grown adults not to throw the ball to the other team.”

This is where her superpower was born. While other sports writers watched institutional chaos unfold, Paige realized: administrative assistants are the only people who actually know how organizations work. Everyone else is just guessing based on emails.

Auf Wiedersehen, amigos.