The Last Black Unicorn(55)

For example, I bought two cases of wine off of Groupon, because they had unicorns on the bottle. I buy sex toys on Amazon. I buy all kinds of things that people think are stupid, and I AM TIRED OF EXPLAINING MYSELF!

I guess I should explain that, too. This was not my first attempt at hiring an assistant. I got baggage here, as well.

Two years ago, my best friend was my assistant. She did part-time work for me, assistant-type stuff. She was always in my business, criticizing me.

Friend: “Oh my God, Tiffany, why did you buy this?”

Tiffany: “Shut up. I’m gonna buy this stuff, I’ll buy whatever I want to buy.”

Friend: “But you’re like, wasting money on gadgets that barely work.”

Can you imagine having that conversation with someone? I don’t want nobody telling me anything about how I spend my money.

I had to let her go. She was getting to be like my mama.

It all started when I shot this Tyler Perry series in Georgia. I needed help with getting a place to stay, learning my lines, and just getting settled in Georgia. One day, I had been talking to her on the phone, and I was like:

Tiffany: “Yeah, I gotta get somebody to help me find a spot out there.”

Friend: “I’ll help you. Shoot, I’m not working right now. You should let me work for you.”

Tiffany: “Cool. But I can only afford like $400 a month.”

Friend: “That’s what’s up. I’m just gonna be excited to be out there.”

She helped me find this three-bedroom house that was only like $400 a month, so that was dope. And then she did everything for me, got the furniture for me, and she would do the grocery shopping. I had brought my dogs with me, so she would walk the dogs. And when I would get home from work, she would run the lines with me.

And she helped me with my emails. At the time I had like 8,000 emails that I hadn’t even checked yet, so she checked all of them.

Yeah, I know. 8,000 unread emails. And a lot of them were important.

Friend: “Tiffany, you’ve got to check your emails more often. You know you probably missed twenty or thirty thousand dollars in comedy shows alone?”

Tiffany: “Wait—what?”

Friend: “So many people emailing you about doing comedy shows. Oh my God, Tiffany, you missed so much money not checking these emails.”

A lot of them were recent, and I ended up making an additional four or five thousand dollars off a few of the emails.

When we were in Georgia, it was fun. When we got back to LA, I told her:

Tiffany: “I’m not working like that no more, and I don’t really need an assistant.”

Friend: “I’ll just work anyways, I’ll do it anyways. You don’t need to pay me.”

That did not work out. Basically, the next few months was just her questioning what I did and then telling me what to do.

Friend: “You need to go to bed.”

Tiffany: “You ain’t my mama!”

Friend: “Go to bed, Tiffany, you need to go to bed. You gotta go to work tomorrow.”

Or when I was seeing this basketball player at the time, and she’d be like:

Friend: “You need to make him commit, he needs to make a commitment to you.”

Tiffany: “He ain’t your boyfriend, is he? I’m just enjoying him, leave me alone. I’m going to his game tonight.”

Friend: “You don’t have time for games, you’re busy. You need to call your agent, you need to call your manager, you got a telephone interview at six, you got a set tomorrow . . .”

Just like, ALWAYS telling me what I needed to do.

Which was what I was paying her to do. I mean, she was really good at it.

I just had issues with that.

So yeah, I had to fire her. We are still friends, but we don’t talk about money or my career anymore. It’s not awkward though. At least not for me.

I know that I do need somebody reminding me what to do. I procrastinate on everything. Like right now. I should’ve went to the grocery store yesterday to get groceries, because I’m gonna cook for my brothers and sisters tomorrow, but I’m like, “Eh, the grocery store is twenty-four hours, I’ll go later, I’ll do it later.”

Then when I get the groceries, it’ll be two o’clock in the morning, and I’ll get home, and I know I need to marinate this and do that and I’m just like, “Ah, I’ll do it in the morning.” Then I’ll wake up in the morning and be like, “Ah, I’m still sleepy, I’ll do it in a couple hours.”

Then everybody’ll be here, and then I’ll be doing it. Everybody’ll be waiting for the food and looking at me like, “Dang Tiff, you knew we was coming, didn’t you?”

Okay, so yeah, I got problems.

But I don’t want to be pestered about them!





How to Handle Backstabbing Bitches


My life is pretty good now, but sometimes I run into some motherfuckers and shit goes off. I’ll tell you about this one time, very recently, I was at a wedding.

My boyfriend (at the time) and I were the only black couple there. We looked good. It was all white people and us. Very fancy wedding, lots of rich people, etc.

I went in the bathroom and was sitting in the stall peeing. Then, two ladies came in. They must have thought they were alone, because they started talking loud: