Percy Bysshe Shelley once wrote that poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.Change “poets” to “assistants,” and you’ve got it about right.

I should know. As editor of the Web site savetheassistants.com, I get e-mails every day from assistants who want to vent about their jobs. I’ve been stopped on the street and at parties by people who want to talk about feeling unacknowledged, overworked and/or abused, or just tell the story about the time their boss made them come in at 8:30 a.m. on a Sunday because the office printer was jammed.

My mail comes from all over the country, but New York City takes the prize as the capital of beleaguered assistants. There are tens of thousands of them in the Big Apple, working in industries from finance to publishing to public relations – and many of them are miserable and seeking a place to vent.

That’s where my site comes in. I started Save the Assistants (STA) with my friend Ashley Seashore in 2006, after leaving a horrific job as the assistant to a corporate executive. I answered his phone, arranged his schedule – and got yelled at constantly. One day he’d demand that I make changes to our official company stationery (which I obviously couldn’t do), the next he’d tell a visiting client how incompetent I was while I was standing in front of them pouring coffee. When I finally quit, he told me I was only leaving because I was having “girl issues.”

It was my first job out of college, and the only reason I didn’t have a nervous breakdown was that the other assistants all helped one another out. So I started STA to provide a forum where coffee-fetchers, copy-makers and general office slaves can make their voices heard, as well as anonymously blast the boss who forced them to go on a diet, or threw a fit when she didn’t get a gift on Boss’ Day.

Two years later, I’ve gathered quite an earful from the city’s assistants; now it’s time to have a word with the bosses. I’ll let you in on some of the worst boss behavior out there – and a few things you can do to make sure you don’t end up getting bashed on a site like mine.

Appearances are deceiving- and usually none of your business. Commenting on how your assistant is doing at work-related tasks is fair game. If they missed a name while they were loading your contacts onto your BlackBerry or put too much Sweet’N Low in your decaf, by all means say something. But your assistant’s appearance? Off limits. Yes, I know you had to take an anti-harassment seminar when the company first hired you – I also know you spent the whole time sending text messages. So let me sum up what you missed: If it doesn’t directly impact the company or relate to your assistant’s job performance, it’s not your problem.

If your assistant wears jeans to an office where suits are the norm, or shows up every day in a tube top and spikes, feel free to mention the company dress code. But don’t be like the Manhattan advertising executive who berated her assistant for wearing “nondesigner labels” that made the agency look “cheap,” or the fashion-industry boss who helpfully informed her assistant that she’d look better in the new spring fashions if she lost her baby fat.

And here’s another hint: If you’re determined to have your assistant project a certain image, you should pay him or her enough to afford it.

Mean it. Or at least sound like you mean it. One of my favorite stories we’ve run on STA – and one of the most quoted – was from a girl who worked in a law office, whose boss had a tendency to yell commands at her from across the room. The really bad part wasn’t that he’d shout “I need those documents by noon, or else!!” – it was that he’d pause afterward, and then add “. . . please.”

It sounded like at some point said lawyer had been told it was not so nice to scream orders at his assistant, and thought tacking on a “please” at the end made him sound like less of a jerk.

Clearly, it didn’t. If anything, it emphasized his rudeness even more.

Look, you’re allowed to tell your assistant what to do. That’s why you have an assistant in the first place. But when you say “Thanks” or “Please,” make sure you mean it.

And while you’re at it, you might want to get out from behind your desk and talk to your assistant one-on-one, rather than screaming across the office. Just an idea.

Keep your personal life personal. STA reader Vicky in Manhattan dubbed her boss an “oversharer,” because she wanted to bend Vicky’s ear about everything from her relationship problems to her menopause symptoms.

There are plenty more where she came from, which leads me to this next point: If you need an assistant, hire an assistant. If you need a therapist, get a therapist. It’s generally best not to mix the two.

It’s not unusual for an assistant to know basic stuff about the boss’ personal life. Given the nature of the job, it’s inevitable they’ll learn things from the boss’ PIN number to where she’s going on vacation. But when you make your assistant lie to your wife about your mistress, as was the case with one Wall Street executive assistant, you’ve gone too far.When it comes to personal stuff, keep people on a need-to-know basis. And your assistant may not need – or want – to know.

If that doesn’t dissuade you, consider that anything you tell your assistant probably won’t stay a secret for long. In most companies, any interesting bit of gossip makes its way from the seventh floor to the reception desk in about five minutes. And even if your assistant is a model of discretion, he or she probably sits in a cubicle where four other assistants overhear every phone call they make.

Set limits. In addition to keeping your personal life personal, you should exercise discretion when figuring out what tasks are appropriate to assign your assistant. Possibly the most common theme among the horror stories submitted to my site is assistants who have to handle personal tasks that are – or ought to be – far beyond their job description.

One of our “Hall of Shame” stories is about an assistant whose boss announced she had a below-the-belt infection, and sent her out to Duane Reade to pick up some cranberry juice and a “special cream.”

Then there’s Ricki Lake, who in a recent interview for her documentary “The Business of Being Born,” told a story about how her assistant had to clean up after her when she gave birth to her son at home.

From these two stories, we can divine an important rule: If it involves your bodily fluids, it does not fall under an assistant’s jurisdiction, unless yours happens to be an RN.

Pretend you’re the assistant. Remember what it was like when you started out in your career? Not everyone had to be an assistant, but unless you’re Donald Trump Jr., you probably didn’t get to skip immediately from a dorm room to an executive suite. And recalling what you were like when you were 23 might help you keep things in perspective.

I’m not saying you should buy your assistant expensive gifts to win their affection – it didn’t work on your kids, and it won’t work on your assistant either. I’m saying you should treat your assistant like a human being.

That means using their name instead of saying “Hey you,” understanding why they want the day off on their birthday even though you have a presentation that day and not asking them to change your baby’s diapers because the nanny has the afternoon off.

When assistants like you, they’re way more likely to stay an extra half-hour or not mind when you send them back to Starbucks because your latte has too much milk in it. It’s well documented that people like to work for people they respect. So if you’re a better boss, you’ll have a better assistant. And that benefits everyone.

tips for the other side of the desk

I’m not naive enough to assume every assistant is a saint and every boss a cruel tyrant. There are plenty of lousy assistants out there giving everyone else in the profession a bad name, and plenty of ways even decent assistants can get better. Here are a couple of things an assistant can do to try and improve things from your end.

* Pick up on your boss’ weaknesses: I’m not saying you should find out your boss’ vulnerabilities in order to exploit him. I’m saying you can be a bigger asset by finding out what your boss doesn’t like to do and doing it yourself. If he’s always late for meetings, put them in his calendar as starting 15 minutes earlier. If you make his life easier, you’ll make your relationship better, too.

* Don’t expect a rose garden: At the end of the day, you’re an assistant. Make sure your demands about job duties and treatment are consistent with that position. If you’re supposed to be learning about an industry and your boss refuses to let you sit in on meetings and learn how to negotiate a contract, you should speak up and say you’re missing out on something. But if you think you’re too good make coffee? Sadly, you’re not. They call it “paying your dues” for a reason.

* Plan ahead: You sometimes schedule meetings for your boss a year in advance. So when it comes to taking days off or going on vacation, giving plenty of notice means your boss won’t get as flustered about covering your absence. You also have more time to make sure any important tasks are taken care of before you leave. After all, no one wants to be lying on a beach somewhere and get interrupted by a screaming phone call.

* Be a smart complainer: I’m not going to tell you not to complain about your boss – if you did, I’d be out of a job. But the trick to complaining is to do it wisely. A good way is to vent to a friend on the phone or over happy-hour drinks. A bad way is to bash your boss via an e-mail sent from the company account, or to a co-worker whose loyalty isn’t to you. Venting can help ease your stress – just make sure you do it in a way that won’t cause more problems later.