"You SUCK as a photo assistant if"

Found this on 1ProPhoto.com's forum board.

1) The call time for the location van is 7:00 Am and you show up at 8:15
2) You sit down to eat breakfast with the client and read the paper while the rest of the crew is setting up lights and cameras.
3) You tell the photographer or the other assistant that you know how to use a piece of equipment when you’ve never seen it before.
4) You don't know how to use a flash meter
5) You don't know how to use a color temperature meter. And taking a reading you give the wrong value, “46 is not a color temperature.”
6) You don't know how to color correct your studio lights
7) When there’s equipment to move or load on a truck you suddenly disappear.
8) your talking on your cell phone or sending and receiving text messages on set during the photo shoot.
9) Your smoking on or near the set or shoot location.
10) Sitting down on the job. Photo Assistants should never be sitting down, there is always something to do.
11) You solicit the photographer’s client during the shoot by trying to show your portfolio or handing out business cards, or trying to set up an appointment to show your portfolio post shoot to the art director
12) Your on location and there are cigarette butts on the ground where the model is standing and trash in the background. The photographer points this out and you say: “Oh,.. they can take that out in post”.
13) When lunch arrives you step away from the set to stuff your face while the photographer is still shooting. (Everybody knows that the models eat first ,and the assistants get whats left.)
14) Telling any or everyone on set how much better you are than the photographer that booked the job
15) ... Disappearing to the bathroom for a bump of coke or heroin.
16) You hit on the models trying to get a date.
17) The camera stops working during the shoot and instead of replacing the whole system with the second system, you stand there trying to fix it on set wasting time.
18) Doing a half assed job of breaking down the set and leaving the studio before everything is packed up so that you can go drinking with the client.
19) Leaving a rental studio in worse condition than you found it.
20) Sending back rental equipment and not telling the rental house that a camera is broken or that a strobe pack or other piece of equipment was not working properly.

Extra special bonus) Showing up stoned, drunk or hung over to a shoot.

Oh so true....okay story time.

I used to assist in Dallas in the 90s and there was one gig for a catalog job. The company employs 8 photographers with 4 assistants rotating through. We were in a massive warehouse filled with multiple sets. The images were simple things - stack of towels on a table, images of that nature. I would run around all day through the different photographers and noticed one day that one of the assistant just didn't always seems to be anywhere. I found him in the prop store room taking a nap. Not cool leaving us other 3 assistants to pick up your slack.

Another gig, the photographer, me and another assistant drove down to OC for a gig. I never met this assistant before and neither did the photographer...and let us say he was on something because we both couldn't wait to get the gig done and to drop the guy back at his car. I don't know what drugs he was on but it didn't look good to the client and I had to cover his butt.

And yet another gig, one of the assistant seems to hit on every gal in sight - model, stylists, MUA, site rep, whoever..everytime me and another assistant saw him talking to a girl, we just groan. I think the photographer stop hiring him at some point.

If you got stories, post them !

(Just leave out names)