SPOILER: sent in by Annie.
Ever since she was very young, Andrea Sachs had wanted to write for the New Yorker. To sum up, she worked hard through college and then took a trip through Europe with her boyfriend before starting to look for a job. A random resume she left at the Elias-Clark building (publisher of Runway magazine) lands her an interview. After a bizarre interview process, Andrea is hired, only to find out the job “a million girls would die for” is the worst job EVER.
At first, she thinks she’ll be able to handle her new position with no problems, but things quickly get out of hand. Her boss, Miranda Priestly, treats her assistants (and everyone else) like dirt and relies on them to do everything short of chewing her food for her. Most of the time she doesn’t give any details as to what she needs, but expects her assistants to figure out any orders she gives them, or at least expects them to jump through some hoops before she tells them what she really wants.
Andrea is soon surviving on a mere 5 hours of sleep a night and dreads the sound of her cell phone ringing – since Miranda calls at least 5 times every hour. She is also straining to keep up with the ridiculously fashionable group working for the magazine by wearing designer labels and 4 inch heals to the office (clothing that the magazine gives her from old photo shoots). She keeps the job though, holding onto the hope that, if she survives as Miranda’s assistant for one year, she will be able to get any job she wants – as all Miranda’s other assistants have done.
These long days begin to take their toll on her relationships with her boyfriend, Alex, and her best friend Lily. They can’t understand why this job is so demanding, takes all of her time and makes her cancel any special plans she has at the drop of a hat. It doesn’t help that Andrea has met a handsome, young writer who keeps popping up in her life and who doesn’t seem to be interested in the fact that she already has a boyfriend. Meanwhile, Lily is having major alcohol problems that Andrea knows she should be helping with, but can never seem to find the time. It seems all she does is work and complain about work.
Things all come crashing down when Miranda’s senior assistant gets sick, thus leaving Andrea to accompany Miranda to Paris for a week. Andrea’s boyfriend tells her he wants to “take a break,” since he can see he is no longer very important in her life. Once Andrea arrives in Paris, things are just as bad as she thought they could get, until she gets phone messages saying that Lily was in a terrible car accident because of her drinking, and is now in a coma. Andrea wants to stay and just finish what she has started but, when Miranda tells her she must renew her daughters’ passports in about 12 hours, she loses it. In front of many very important people at a very important fashion show, Andrea tells Miranda to “f**k off” and leaves Paris that very night.
When she gets home, Lily wakes up and is fine, but nothing will ever be the same with Alex. Andrea writes short versions of her experience with Miranda and submits them to several magazines. She gets a call back from Seventeen, from a woman who was also Miranda’s assistant once upon a time. She loves Andrea and gives her plenty of leads for other jobs. Andrea also sells all the expensive clothing she collected from her 11 months at Runway and makes an easy $38,000, giving her plenty of time to find a new job.
The story ends with Andrea going to meet with someone at her old Elias-Clark building to sell a story to one of the columns in Runway magazine. She runs into a frantic looking girl who, presumably, has Andrea’s old position.
