Girl Friday : An Extraordinarily Ordinary Working LifeGirl Friday : An Extraordinarily Ordinary Working Life

Girl Friday - a job title used in 1970s workplaces for a junior administration assistant or receptionist. Common synonyms include junior office chick, shit-kicker, donkey worker, general dogsbody or gofer (go for this, go for that). Kristine Philipp was 15 when she lied to get a junior office job as a Girl Friday in 1975 - she took the job because she thought she only had to go to work on Fridays. In the 40 years that followed, Kristine went on to experience the full gamut of working life - from joblessness, self-employment, mind-numbing office roles, toxic workplaces and out-of-control workloads. Then in her fifties, she became unemployable and ready to tell all. Girl Friday is a hilarious and moving memoir about one woman's career, but it echoes the larger issues that are faced by many workers: pay inequality, income and housing insecurity and the often alienating nature of the twenty-first century workforce. This is a story about resilience and reinvention. A story about how we are not human resources, we are human beings.