Am I busy? Duh. These days, we all are.
Don’t let that cute smile on my face fool ya, I’m stressed out.
Almost every night, just before I fall asleep, a nagging thought leaps through my brain. You forgot to make that important appointment. Again. Something has always fallen through the cracks.
Enter: Fancy Hands. Not only a solution for the problem, but my new employer, as well.
I’m the Director of Communications, which means that I’m in charge of these here words.
You can read about how I joined Fancy Hands right here. The media made the transition sound scandalous, but it really wasn't. Ted didn't even get to hang out with Tyra. And that's a shame, because he has a fabulous runway walk.
The best thing about my new job is that I get to try Fancy Hands out as a customer. Hot damn!
Fancy Hands is an assistant service, and Ted is the founder. Here he is with his favorite friend, Rasta Banana, at The Feast of San Genarro in Little Italy. Hi, Ted!
Ted was so busy writing a book, working a day job, and being a dad that his to-do list became an impossible mountain of tasks. So he built a software program and hired a team of assistants to handle it.
(Most people would have just turned to drinking. Lucky for us, Ted is more ambitious than that.)
And now here I am, one year later, joining the company and happily turning my to-do list over to his team.
I signed up for an account with my personal email address so I wouldn’t get any special treatment, and started assigning jobs to the assistants.
TASK #1: CONFIRM A CREDIT.
My apartment building had to be exterminated a few weeks ago, which meant that my grumpy cat took a trip to the kennel.
I had emailed the receipt to my building management for a rental credit but hadn’t heard back.
My Fancy Hands assistant called and spoke with the management company and confirmed that a credit was being processed to my account.
As an added bonus, my landlord probably thinks that my standing in the world has somehow risen, since I suddenly have an assistant handling these types of things for me.
TASK #2: TELL THE NY SUPREME COURT THAT THEY’RE WRONG.
I served on a grand jury for a month in July. That’s right, every day, from 1-5pm, for a month, people. I have paid my dues as a citizen, and was told at the conclusion of my service that I’m excused from serving on a jury for the next eight years.
Imagine my less-than-overjoyed reaction when I received a notice in the mail last week that I am DELINQUENT FOR SERVICE.
Um…say what?
My Fancy Hands assistant held patiently on the phone and cleared this matter up with the court system. Thank God.
These are the types of mind-numbing calls that can throw your whole day off. It made me feel so light and happy to know that I didn’t have to deal with this. I skipped down the street. I sang show tunes. I hugged strangers.
TASK #3: GET AN AVERAGE NUMBER OF A LIST.
As I settled in during my first week at Fancy Hands, I wanted to learn more about our customers. I had a list of our clients’ birthdates in front of me, but…
I have a photography degree. That means I can take pretty pictures, but I don’t know how to get an average from thousands of birthdates.
I started Googling things like
How can I get an average age from a list of birthdates since I’m dumb?
and I even made a foolish attempt at entering an equation of sum averages into an Excel sheet,
and then I thought – wait, I don’t have to be good at math, I have a Fancy Hands assistant!
In your face, Mrs. Williams (my 9th grade algebra teacher who insisted that I “would never make it without math in the real world”)!
I shot the birthdates over to my Fancy Hands assistant and received a reply in lightning fast time.
The average age of our customers is 33. Good to know!
TASK #4: SCHEDULE A TOUR WITH MY FRIEND & BOOK IT WITH THE COMPANY.
A while ago, I bought two tickets for a walking food tour of Greenwich Village. I don’t really know what that is, but it sounds fun. The tickets have been sitting on my counter for months, in “gotta-schedule-that-soon” purgatory.
I knew this was a perfect task for my Fancy Hands assistant. I scanned the tickets over to her and gave her my friend’s contact information. She gathered available dates from the tour company, confirmed what would work with my friend, and booked the tour.
Four tasks in my first week - all completed to my great satisfaction by a Fancy Hands assistant.
Using Fancy Hands saved me time, frustration, and it made me feel good.
Simplify your life today with
and let me know how it goes over on Twitter!
