No man — or woman — can serve two masters, says St Matthew. Not so, reckons Julia Stubblefield whose two bosses phone, text and email their daily instructions from opposite ends of the country.
“It makes my job fun. It’s certainly not boring,” says Ms Stubblefield, who gave up a 15-year career as an executive personal assistant to start a family. Now her children are at school, she has returned to work, using the same administrative skills she deployed in her former positions at the BBC, Siemens and Johnson & Johnson, but as a freelance “virtual assistant”, or “VA”.
Ms Stubblefield works from her home in Maidenhead, Berkshire. One of her bosses is an investment manager in nearby London, the other a website designer in Newcastle. The tasks they outsource to her are a mix of the professional and the personal, including diary management, sending and chasing invoices, paying bills, booking holidays and even procuring a plastic turkey for a staff party.