Last month she booked you on a flight to St. Louis — when you wanted to go to Saint Lucia — and hosted martini parties in your office while you were gone.
ALSO WORKS FOR:
Anyone else in the professional realm.

PASSIVE
Keep your fingers crossed that she quits. If there's toxic chemistry between the two of you, or if the assistant just isn't catching on, perhaps she is as miserable as you are. "I was desperate to leave my last job, and my boss knew it," says a former assistant at a design firm in New York. "I wish he had just acknowledged the awful situation and offered me a little leeway during the workday to look for another job."

AGGRESSIVE
Fire on the spot, when you're furious. "I had a personal assistant for 10 years and fired her after a culmination of things," says Charlotte Ford, author of 21st-Century Etiquette ($14, www.amazon.com). "The last straw was the day my driver had a seizure while I was in the car and my assistant refused to come get me. I was left stranded at a hotel beside two ambulances."

PREFERRED
"Don't let a bad situation drag on. Take your assistant's feelings into consideration and end it quickly," says the former design-firm assistant. Give the news in private, and be straightforward. Do it later in the day so she will be able to curse you and pack up after work hours. Do it early in the week so she will have the remainder of the week to regroup. "The burden is on you to be a good manager and to give her constructive criticism," says Peggy Post, author of Emily Post's Etiquette ($38, www.amazon.com). "Firing someone for poor performance should never come as a surprise."