When you are working on set as a PA there is a long list of do’s and don’ts that you should really be aware of.  One of the most important (I think) do’s is do think before you act or react.  Now I honestly thought that this was pretty self explanatory but apparently I was wrong.

While working on a set a few weeks back I heard through the grapevine of a situation that one of the other PA’s had gotten themselves into.  A lot of times a production coordinator or production manager will give a PA money to go pick up things that are needed on set.  On this day one of the newbie PA’s was sent out to go pick up food for some of the executive producers.  Now this should be a fairly easy task for any PA.  You place the order, you go to the restaurant, you double and triple check to make sure the order is right,  you grab a receipt and bring back the food.  Depending on how far the restaurant is this whole process should not take you very long unless you are picking up food for the entire crew which is a whole other blog post for another time.

This PA was only supposed to pick 3 orders of dinner from a restaurant that is literally across from our production office.  The order was placed at 6pm and the restaurant had told whoever called that it would be ready in 10-15 min.  Our production manager hands the PA money and tells her to grab a receipt.  The PA then heads out to grab the food.  Fifteen minutes pass and the PA has not yet returned with the food.  Our production manager tries her on walkie but she doesn’t answer.  He then calls her cell, however, it is apparently turned off.    Thirty minutes go by and there is still no PA in sight with the producers food.  At this point you can probably guess that my production manager is pissed.  Forty five minutes pass and finally our newbie PA waltzes into the production office on her cell phone.  She drops off the food on the desk and waltzes back outside to finish her phone conversation.

When she returns back into the production office she is called in to speak with our production manger.  Now I don’t know what exactly was said, however, I heard that she made the biggest mistake a PA ever could make.  Instead of just shutting her mouth and saying “I’m sorry, this is my fault.”  she blamed everyone else possible and then proceeded to tell the production manager why he was wrong and out of line.

Needless to say this newbie PA was not on set the next day, or ever again for that matter.