Diary of a Working Girl (14 page)

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“You’re Tiffany, right?” I ask when our eyes meet (which they often do when smokers are sitting around smoking together).

“Yeah, you’re Tom’s new assistant, right?” she asks, putting her hand out.

“That’s right. Lane,” I say as we shake. She’s got her dark hair back in one of those lazy buns you normally reserve for the gym or an evening in.

“This is a great place to work, isn’t it?” I ask.

“It’s okay,” she says in that way only someone with years of familiarity with a place can, and so I’m left wondering if she’s blind despite the eye contact. A job at a mall store can be okay. A position waiting tables can be okay. But a job living, breathing, doing just about anything amongst all this testosterone—well, that can’t be described as anything less than spectacular.

“What do you do here?” I ask, taking in her outfit—slightly pilled black pants and a loose gray top.

“I assist Larry Waters, one of the VPs,” she says, after a long exhale.

I figure this could be a good opportunity to gain a bit of insight into the dating scene around here. “I can’t believe how many men there are here,” I venture, omitting, almost without effort now, the verbal exclamation point at the end. Which I hope does wonders to conceal the exclamation point now contained in a permanent bubble over my head.

“Yeah, but they’re all assholes,” she says, again with that tone of experience. She rolls her eyes for emphasis and taps one finger on her cigarette, which sends a little tornado of ashes spiraling up over the two of us.

“They can’t
all
be assholes,” I shrug. I hate people who over-generalize. And then I realize I have probably been overgeneraliz-ing ever since I laid eyes on this place.

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“Yes. They can,” she retorts, stating a fact as one might note four quarters equal one dollar. “But,” she continues, “that doesn’t stop people from making out in the stairwell or hooking up at happy hour. I’m sure you’ll see.”

I’m never one to be swayed by other opinions, especially when they run so contrary to the one I want to be correct. And even doubly when the very idea of such a thing might stamp out everything I’m working towards here before I’ve even begun working towards it.

“Hey, you going up?” I ask.

“Yeah,” she drops her cigarette to the ground and stomps it out.

Ten men look to see what the women are doing. I think perhaps someone might push her out of the way and say, “Allow me, please.”

“Why don’t we eat lunch together later?” she asks, in her first positive note, before we part at her cubicle. And her face lights up even further when she says, “I can let you in on
all
the gossip.”

“Sure, that would be great,” I say, excited to be initiated into that other sacred office life rite—gossip. Heading over to my cubey I imagine Tiffany’s gossip has got to top any I’d participated in at home. “Did you hear they’re getting a new brand of sport drink at the deli?” and “Our mailman was fired because he was too slow,” isn’t exactly the stuff that inspires remembering, much less recounting.

I

In the end, I had to take a rain check on the lunch date with Tiffany. My smart and well-traveled boss hasn’t had an assistant for a couple of months now and the mountain of receipts growing on his desk nearly touches the ceiling.

When he first introduced me to the Leaning Tower of Pisa that 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:05 AM Page 103

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is his overdue expense receipts, Tom confessed, “I wanted to wait until day two to tell you about this; otherwise, I thought you might run screaming.”

With hands raised and waving in the international sign for running scared, I managed to score some guilt from my thoughtful but apparently sneakier-than-he-might-look boss.

“Fine. You’re right. I should have warned you.”

I shake my head; the assistant scorned.

“Although technically this was in the job description, I’ll make it up to you. Let’s see . . . lunch?” I thought the idea of another lunch spent fighting over pretzel bites could be considered enjoyable. But then I thought of that tie. And that evil girlfriend. And that Tom, as sweet and smart and funny as he was, was just not my type. Still, I could enjoy lunch with him.

“Lunch is on me. Order in from wherever you like. The menus are in the bottom drawer on the left side of your cub-
icle
.

You can even have them bring you a glass of wine. I gather you’ll need it.”

Of course. He meant I could
order
lunch. Not us having lunch
together
. Thank God. Really, I would have just gone to be nice anyway.

Still I was strangely happy to find the no-drinking rule not strictly enforced.

I

However, I realize later, maybe it isn’t so much that the rule is not strictly enforced as it is just reserved for times when one really needed to bend it. The problem isn’t so much that the pile could serve as a life-sized model of a floor-to-ceiling bookcase, but rather the fact I can barely count to ten, much less learn to convert pounds and yen(s?) into dollars to figure out how much Tom’s re-21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:05 AM Page 104

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ally spent on his international trips. I decide to start with the neat taping of all the receipts onto letter-sized paper, organized by each week, which in itself is rather simple and cathartic, and after a few hours, mind-numbing and, well, dangerous—if you consider the three Band-Aids that now serve as accessories to my ensemble (today, adorable white Hugo Boss pants suit from the Century 21 ex-travaganza—only eighty dollars!—and a black shell, black kitten-heeled mules, beaded turquoise necklace, and simple silver drop earrings).

I am just finished with taping the first three weeks of receipts, and although Tom is the picture of appreciativeness, popping his head in with lunch menu suggestions, treats from the vending machines, and little paper signs that say “Thank You” with poor attempts at stars and hearts, I need to take a break from the monotony. And so I head to the copy room for the utterly riot-a-minute task of running this first bit through for Tom’s records.

The “Law of Offices” tacked up over the copier on an appropriately post-paper-jam crinkled sheet of copy paper dictates:

“Whenever you need to copy something, this stupid machine always breaks.”

I am knee deep in the thing, doors and drawers open everywhere, when I realize the Law of Offices may be less of a joke than a matter of fact. Little sprinkles of black stuff are settling all over my hands and arms when I hear a voice from somewhere outside of this machine that I now fear may become my second home, if I can’t figure out how to get my hand out of the little back nook I have jammed it into.

“Don’t you know what you’re supposed to do when the copier breaks?” the voice says.

“What’s that?” I ask, although I doubt he can hear me with my face literally inside the machine.

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“Run away, run away,” he says. “It’s the only way to make it to the top. Otherwise, everyone will know you’re the loser who fixes the copier and they’ll call you in for backup every single time the fucking thing breaks. Before you know it, you’re retiring as the copy guy.”

I consider that this is actually very good advice, except for the fact that I don’t know the loser who currently holds this position to get me out of my bind, or get my hand out of the copier for that matter. By some miracle (I may be using all of mine up this week), I give one hard tug, and my hand is free, saving me from a pretty humiliating explanation that I’m not sure I can even come up with at this point.

So, trying to regain my cool, I turn around to inquire, “So who’s the loser that currently holds that position? I need backup.”

He’s cute—in a smuggish kind of way that I don’t normally like. His tie is swung over his shoulder. You can’t pull that off unless you’re sure it won’t hurt your cool factor. I normally never like guys that know they are good-looking because, well, they know they are good-looking. And, in my experience, this means they will never let you forget that, or the other fact surrounding good-looking men: that they know there’re a million more where you came from—and if you don’t like what you’re getting, he can simply turn the corner and pick up the next girl in line.

But I’m a different person now, I remind myself. And that means I shouldn’t judge people on first glance anymore. That’s so PWW

(Preworkingwoman), and as far as I’m concerned, she went out with that stack of press releases I tossed last night.

“For future reference, it’s Donny Gold in accounting. But I think he’s just in it for the chicks, so be warned. This time, since you’re new, I’ll help you out. But for the record, I never did this, and I have no idea how to use this thing. I’m Seth, by the way.”

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“Lane.” I put my hand out, and I’m thinking how exciting this, my first possibly romantic encounter, could turn out to be, how absolutely perfect this could turn out, when he notices the particularly unromantic Band-Aid collection on my hand.

“Nice look,” he says, flitting his gaze up to my face and back down to the accessories in question, as if he’d done this a million times and could turn just about anything into an opportunity to turn a girl on.

“Thanks. It’s all the rage in Milan.”

I watch as he bends over to check out the copier situation. And the view of his end doesn’t elicit any complaints from my end.

Looking directly at his ass like this, though, I can’t help but hear Tiffany’s comment in my head, “They’re all assholes.” With a butt that cute, surely a guy couldn’t be all bad, right?

“So what department you in?” he asks.

“Mergers and Acquisitons,” I say, finally getting the hang of the name after answering the phone that way no less than twenty times, considering the string of words together so many times they no longer held any meaning.

“Cool. I’m in accounting. Those are, like, two separate worlds around here—like the Jets and the Sharks. We’re not really even supposed to be talking to each other.” He put his finger over his mouth as a signal of secrecy.

“Really? Why’s that?” I ask in a breathy voice, quickly getting swept away with the idea of intrigue and secret meetings à la James Bond—complete with slick form-fitting leather skirts and décolletage-revealing evening gowns.

“It was a joke, Lane.”

“Oh. Yeah, that’s right; only the investment and trading sides are protected by, um, smoke walls,” I say, trying to impress him with 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:05 AM Page 107

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my vast knowledge of the financial world. I tug the sides of my blazer to show I mean business.

“I think you mean firewalls,” he says, turning around and smiling at me.

He pivots back to the copier, and within seconds, a crinkled, burnt paper emerges from deep inside. “I’ve found your culprit.

Looks like it was stuck between your A and B slots, right by the corpus opperendi.”

“How’d you know all that?” I am truly amazed.

“Again, it was a joke, Lane.”

“Oh.”

He snaps a succession of drawers and doors closed, slips his paper onto the glass and successfully makes a copy.

“You do impressive work,” I comment.

He shows no hint of being flattered. Instead, stony, he issues a reminder. “Like I said, this never happened.”

“And what happens if I do, say, accidentally, let it slip?” I venture to find out.

“Well, I guess you’ll just have to take your chances.” And with that he disappears out the door.

Again, I note, very cute butt. Very cute.

Asshole?

I

By the time 5:30 rolls around, I am done with mindless copying and taping and organizing, and my head is so fuzzy from focusing on the same thing for so long that there is no way I can attempt to actually figure out the conversions right now. Instead, it seems quite the natural time to write my daily journal entry.

This may be the first time in my life that I said I would do 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:05 AM Page 108

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something every day and actually did it. Maybe this is only the second day, but I am still impressed with myself. I think, though, the dedication is partially due to the fact that the job, itself, despite what I said yesterday,
is
boring and virtually brainless, and so, I need to remind myself that I am actually a writer, with a real career, that actually means something to me, and that the pursuit of that career is why I am here in the first place.

I’m just opening to a clean page of
Diary of a Working Girl
, when a little envelope appears at the bottom of my screen. I have an email! Tom has yet to e-mail me, and nobody else I know has this address, so I’m guessing it’s probably some announcement about new coffee in the kitchen, or some warning about leaving dirty mugs in the sink, from someone who has an even less brain-taxing job than mine.

But, I couldn’t be more wrong. It’s from the copy guy, Seth.

Lane,

I very much enjoyed being your knight in shining armor in the copy room earlier. I hope you are impressed with my technological genius. I was not very impressed with your technological abilities at all. But, lucky for you, I am willing to overlook that. I do hope, however, that you are genius in the area of sparkling dinner conversation, because I would like to see if you are free on Thursday.

—Seth

Seth,

I am glad to hear you are willing to overlook my inefficiency in the area of copy machines. I am not making any promises in the 21430_ch01.qxd 1/26/04 10:05 AM Page 109

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area of dinner conversation, but I will let you know that I am an expert in the area of accepting free dinners (before you wonder about the meaning of this for the next twenty-four hours, yes, I am a gold digger and I expect you to pay for every cent of the meal J). I would be delighted.You pick the place. I’ll meet you at the scene of the copy disaster. Say six?