In parting, the two women reiterated well-known complaints about the Salt Lake City mayor's management style and treatment of his employees.

On Anderson's orders, his chief of staff fired executive secretary Dorothy Stangle on Wednesday.

Holly Bell, an office assistant, then wrote a note saying she wouldn't be back.

Stangle said Wednesday evening she didn't know why she was sacked after three months on the job. She was in charge of managing the mayor's schedule.

"I was told that my work was great but the mayor just wasn't comfortable with me running his life. Then I was told not to feel bad because he made a habit of going through assistants," said Stangle, who has 25 years of experience as an administrative assistant. "Everybody liked me in the office, and I liked them. I'm really upset about the whole thing."

She described the mayor as difficult to work for. She has heard him yell at some staff - "just flying off the handle" - and describes him as having two personalities. Sometimes he's nice, she said, other times he ignored her or wanted her to clean out his pet parrot's cage, which he keeps at City Hall.

"Normally, that's not part of the job description," Stangle said.

Anderson didn't comment Wednesday. Instead, Chief of Staff Sam Guevara described Stangle as a "great lady," but said she was not "meeting the needs of the office. A lot of things were slipping through the cracks."

Still, the mayor's office will give her a positive letter of recommendation.

Guevara already was searching for Stangle's replacement before she was let go. He also noted the mayor has asked him to clean out the bird cage. "I've done it, and I'm the chief of staff. It's just something that needed to be done."

Bell had worked in the mayor's front office for a year. She drove him to appointments, answered e-mails and wrote letters. The mayor's office didn't know she had quit until notified by a reporter.

"Part of my quitting is in protest of him firing Dorothy. It's him firing Deeda [Seed, his former communications manager]. It's him firing Duncan [Moench, a former communications manager]. Mainly, it's a statement of saying to Rocky I won't support him anymore until he can support his staff," Bell said.

She described having to run personal errands for the mayor - pick up his dry cleaning, his shoelaces. He recently asked her to pick up a homeless man, who had been in jail, from the mayor's house, where the man had been living. She refused.

Guevara said he understood Bell's safety concerns about picking up the guest, and he found someone else on staff to do it. As for running some of the mayor's errands, "I don't see any problems with that. We're all just trying to help out."

Bell described the work environment in the mayor's office as "horrible" and "dysfunctional." She said while the mayor appreciates his staff's work, "he doesn't allow for human error. I do actually like his politics. [But] if you're treating all the people around you, who are trying to support you, poorly, I don't see how progress can be made."

Guevara countered that the mayor's office has a "very solid team."

"The staff is working together. Like any business, sometimes people's priorities change. Apparently Holly's did."

The departures come eight months after Anderson fired Seed, a former city councilwoman. Anderson said she was incompetent. Seed accused the mayor of degrading employees.

Christy Cordwell, Anderson's longtime assistant, then quit in protest.