Staff Assistant

Welcome to the most ignored yet most often feared job, the Staff Assistant. Armed with your trusty grey jumpsuit, ID card, and access to Tool Storage, Tech Storage, and Maintenance, you are a plague upon the station, tearing down every wall, breaking into every room and stealing everything not bolted down (and sometimes even bolts that hold the items down).

BIG NOTE

Don't actively try to ruin shit, break into places, steal shit, and destroy stuff. This is generally known as "greytiding", and it's considered a form of Grief. Griefing is against the Rules if you're not an Antagonist; you'll usually know if you're an antag because there will be a big popup and chat message explaining the whole antag business. Think of this way: would you want people to do this stuff to you?

What do I do?

Officially, your responsibility includes asking people if they need help. This never, ever happens. Either bug the head of personnel or captain for a new job or steal a better ID from someone's corpse. Unofficially, you are the red-shirt of Space Station 13. Your life is meaningless and you are expected to litter a hallway with your corpse should hostile entities make it to Space Station 13.

Fun Things to Do as Assistant

Here are some things you can do to make people like you if you're stuck as an assistant.

• Wear the clown suit and spread misery joy.

• Wear the barber suit and operate the barbershop.

• Wear the mailman suit and deliver forge letters to people.

• Wear the party princess suit and be a pretty princess *sparklesparkle*.

• Wear the reporter jacket and fedora, take pictures and do interviews.

• Open up one of the market areas to sell stuff you find around the station for profit.

• Don't read Beepsky's journal, or disregard that, read his journal and play tag with Beepsky. Be aware that Beepsky always wins.

• Be nice to security. Rough housing with Sec is punished harshly.

• Hang out in the gym with other assistants pumping weights, doing drugs and feeling the burn.

• Play the saxophone. Start a band.

Actually Assistant

Pretty much no one but jerkasses will give you hell for not assisting people, but if you're looking to make yourself useful, there's a lot of ways you can lend a hand. Since you start with limited access, you'll probably have to ask the AI or someone of the relevant job to let you into places or request some access upgrades from the Head of Personnel, Captain, or Head of Security so you can help people.

• Learn how to do other jobs. You could always get a new job from the Head of Personnel, Captain, or Head of Security and become good at it. You might even become an unlikely hero.

• Ask if someone if you could shadow them and learn how they do their job, like an intern. Watch them work and do their everyday duties, help them out if they ask or seem to need it.

• Drag corpses to Medbay for cloning, to robotics for borging or to the chapel for a funeral. The chaplain has even less to do than you, and he'll be thrilled out of his mind to get corpses. Off the record you can also drag them to kitchen where they will probably make food out of them.

• Do repairs, fight fires and fix gas leaks. You should probably learn how to build walls and floors, and how to use fire extinguishers and fire suits first. Air leaks can be a danger to the station. Be careful about repairing hacked doors unless you know what you're doing. Shocked doors are bad for making friends.

• Man the Medbay/Security reception desk.

• Be a test subject for the geneticists, the scientists, the chef or the barman.

• Donate your butt to the needy.

• Engineering
  • Help out the Engineers and Construction Worker with repairs and renovations. See this section this section for instructions on how.
  • If you're on Oshan Laboratory, offer to help the Engineers go search for hotspots or mine under them for extra power. Don't get to find internals!
  • Procure materials for the Mechanics' fabricators.
  • Test the Mechanics' latest MechComp contraction, the more deadly-looking the better.
  • Deliver orders to and from Cargo Bay for the Quartermasters.
  • Lend a hand in whatever zany money-making schemes the Quartermasters are up to.
  • Crack open the abandoned crates dug up by the Miners.
  • Ask the Miners if you could help them mine and how. You'll probably have to find your own air supply and make your own space/diving suit and mining tools from the mining fabricators.
  • If the map has it, use the quantum telescope to find asteroids for the Miners.

A Brief History of Greyshirts

Assistants, alongside engineers, were one of the first jobs to implemented, originating way back to 2009-2010, when Exadv1 was still actively developing Space Station 13, spacepeople had blocky heads and limbs and garish colors, and there were no separate codebases and branches.

There used to be four types of assistants: yellow-suited technical assistants for Engineering, white-suited medical assistants for Medical, Research Assistants for Research, and Staff Assistants for Security, which is rather ironic considering the stereotype of Staff Assistants messing with Security and generally being law-breakers than law-enforcers. That last part is why the old A Crash Course in Legal SOP document mentions Staff Assistants being able to conduct trials if given permission and why the ancient Job Information paper says Staff Assistants should be going on patrols.

Technical assistants and medical assistants were removed because all they did was loot the extra places they could access. Staff Assistants lost their Sec access and gained Technical Assistants' Tech Storage access.

Crew Objectives

As a loyal crew member, you can sometimes be assigned some strictly optional objectives to keep yourself busy while you wait for something to happen. As a staff assistant, you can expect to see the following:

End the round with your own butt on your head
Robotics can help here. Just tell the Roboticist you want your butt as a hat and they'll usually oblige you quickly.

End the round with a non-Assistant ID registered to you
Go bother the Head of Personnel or the Captain for a job change. Otherwise, steal an ID off a corpse. The latter might not complete the objective, but hey, new ID.

End the round wearing at least one piece of clown clothing
You could do as this objective says and wear just one piece of clown clothing, but a true assistant knows that you either wear the entire clown suit or nothing at all.

Ensure that Gnome Chompski escapes on the shuttle
Not only is Gnome an expert at hiding, but if you find him and bring him on the shuttle, it's likely someone will kidnap him before you can leave safely. And sometimes, if no one is looking, Chompski also teleports to some random location around him! Easily the hardest assistant objective.

Ensure that Head Surgeon escapes on the Shuttle
While Head Surgeon doesn't hide himself like Chompski, he tends to hang in Operating Theatre or the general Medbay area, which you have limited access to. Try asking your local Janitor or Medical Doctor to bring him out.

Get your grubby hands on a spacesuit
When the round ends, make sure you're wearing a spacesuit. It doesn't matter which one; you can scour emergency oxygen closets and Pod Bays for emergency suits, ask a Head of Staff to hand you a generic space suit from EVA, obtain an engineering space suit by transferring to Engineering or Mining, etc. There are also some unique space suits scattered throughout the Debris Field, and if you're especially lucky or helpful, the Captain might give you their special version as a reward.

A Traitorous Assistant: The Underdog Insurgent

Don't fret when you become a traitor as an assistant. Assistants are widely considered only to be an annoying nuisance, use that to your advantage! While other traitors have to keep up the pretense of doing their real job, you don't have a real job. Although you could go to the HoP and request a promotion that will further your evil schemes. You have access to a few pod bays and other storage areas where you can find all the tools you'll need for breaking and entering, making traps and acquiring weapons. Use what little access you do have to your advantage.

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