What's Driving Miss Shelia?

To be sure, some former Lee aides -- such as Lauri Andress, a City Council aide to Lee, and Clarence Bagby, who worked in her district congressional office -- remain loyal to Lee, and say they would consider working for her again if asked. But most former employees interviewed by the Press say they'd never repeat the experience.

"She is the boss from hell," says one former assistant, a young black woman. "She treats everybody like her slaves. To give you an idea of what I thought my [time] with Sheila was like, it was a slave plantation, and she was the master."

Meredith Jones, the aide commanded to produce an amendment in 30 minutes, won't discuss the specifics of her short employment by Lee, but Jones's resignation has become legend among the congresswoman's staff. After 11 frustrating days on the job, Jones faced her office computer terminal, tapped out a letter of resignation and walked to the Capitol, where Lee was attending a Judiciary Committee meeting. Jones approached as her boss was asking a question, deposited her letter and walked away. For once, Lee was speechless.

Lee didn't bring a car to Washington and declined to lease one. Instead, she depended on her staff to get her around.

"She would give me a time to pick her up in the morning," remembers a former staffer. "You'd get there every morning, usually around nine, and you'd wait between 30 minutes to an hour. Just sitting there, doing nothing."

That petty humiliation particularly grated. "She'd ask you to be there at nine, waiting, summer, winter, spring," remembers another reluctant driver. "Then it would be ten o'clock and she would still not be there. You'd wait the longest time and she would still not be there .... If it was terribly cold or hot, you're sitting there in your suit, sweating in this metal oven. Or freezing."

More galling than the actual driving was Lee's attitude toward her drivers. "She just didn't care," says a former legislative assistant. "She'd come down an hour late and want you to open the door for her .... She's not cognizant of anybody except herself. Everything revolves around her."

Other members of Congress live in Lee's building, less than three short blocks from the Capitol. While waiting for Lee, her staffers watched other lawmakers walk out of the building, laughing and talking, drinking coffee and enjoying the short walk to work. Sometimes, after Lee finally appeared, she would offer rides to her pedestrian colleagues. Her drivers do not recall anyone ever accepting the offer.

The morning pickup was often matched by an evening of chauffeuring Lee around town. Junior employees took turns filling the "late-night shift." One young staffer spent three hours waiting outside an embassy affair. When Lee returned, she capped the boring, dispiriting evening with a gruff, "Take me home."

"If you're at an embassy, surely you can get a guard to call you a fucking cab when the time comes," snorts a former aide. "You've got pocket change, lady. You make $133,000." To make matters worse, staffers usually had to pay for their own gas.

Unnecessary as chauffeur services seem, they can be characterized as an administrative necessity, and therefore allowed by Congress's own rules. But Lee has skirted the rules banning government employees from performing personal services for elected officials. She frequently asked her staff to perform personal errands, such as driving her to appointments with her doctor or buying stockings for her. Last February, an article in Roll Call detailed Lee's unusual demands. Unnamed Lee staffers described driving their boss to the hairdresser and picking up her laundry.

Lee insists all staff duties were necessary to the performance of her official duties, and therefore fall within congressional guidelines. But apparently, "necessary" includes her personal grooming.

"I do know people would take her to the hairdresser," says a former staffer, "because I had to do it once." When Lee asked for the ride, the staffer was under the impression that she was going to a press conference. Instead, she directed him to deposit her at a downtown salon, and to pick her up later for a return trip to the office.

The senior aides who had the credentials to stand up to Lee often did, refusing to drive her or perform the more obvious personal chores. More and more, says one witness, Lee took advantage of junior staffers, who were intimidated by her status and did not know they could refuse.

"These poor little 22-year-olds who are making peanuts are forced into incredibly stressful situations and forced to do things she's not legally, morally or ethically allowed to compel them to do," says the former staff member. "Then on top of that, they're unceremoniously fired."