HIM: Jesus! This was nineteen seventy-six! You’re making less than I was making thirty-some years ago. Take inflation into account and—okay, so this is what you have to do. You contact your boss and you tell them everything you’ve accomplished there, and everything you’re doing. Make your value known. Figure out a number that you want and ask for more than that. Drive a hard bargain. That’s how you negotiate business—
“Jobs are replaceable. People you truly love are not,” writes a successful and prominent journalist in the article online titled “Why Developing Serious Relationships in Your 20s Matters,” though also: “I’m not suggesting, mind you, that you settle down in your twenties. I don’t envision you in a ranch home in the suburbs at twenty-six, feeding your toddlers Cheerios and pureed organic carrots and carting them to and from soccer practice in the family [Missouri: Suburban; SoCal: Prius].”
—and that’s how you do it. Take it from this old-timer. You know why people like me? Because I have style. Mention Bloomberg, see what they say!
ME: Okay, okay, Daddy. What about you? Are you eating food?
HIM: Yes, yes. I ate dumplings this morning. Why do you always have to ask if I’m eating?
ME: Because I feel like if I don’t remind you to eat, you won’t. You said you were going to try to gain weight back, but I don’t believe you.
HIM: Look, I ate dumplings. You know, I’ve always been skinny. Some people get old and fatter. Other people get old and skinnier. That’s me.
ME: Are you drinking water and tea?
HIM: Aiya. Yes, yes. I’m drinking so much water. Tea all the time, too. I’ve had three cups today. Do you remember when Ling Ling and Didi would say to you, ‘Stop being so bossy, you’re not my mom!’? Ha ha ha.
ME: Yeah, yeah. Just please take care of yourself.
HIM: Okay, okay. Now you. Remember, be firm. Be bossy at work, not with me. You helped your bonehead. Now help yourself. And tell him I say hello and congratulations, bonehead!
What I leave out, to prevent the conversation from going for an hour longer, is that now is the worst time. With the new EIC, the office froths with rumors of who’s rising up, who’s being poached from where, and more importantly, who’s out versus who’s safe. Occasionally I hear sniffling in the bathroom stalls. Fewer people eat in the kitchen. More stay at their desks, in front of their computers. The idea is to appear too dedicated to the work to enjoy food.
I know what my dad would have said. Focus, work hard, and it will pay off. He often speaks in platitudes and idioms when I seek advice, and when I don’t. He did that for years—worked hard. Seven days a week working on cars in his shop, gone before I woke up and back in time for a late dinner. (“We’re more like Europeans,” he used to say. “They never eat before eight.”) I don’t know how he can believe the words he says, when it did not, in the long run, pay off for him.
My feet are flat and wide. I wonder if it would have been better to have bound feet, like my great-grandmother’s. Little things that could fit inside a mouth. At Nordstrom Rack, I try to put on a size 7.5 boot.
J, whom I am supposed to help shop for an interview outfit, walks into the aisle and finds me struggling.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“Nothing’s cooperating,” I say, breathless from the fight.
He calls from Pittsburgh. “It’s so cold here!”
He’s getting along great with the professors. (He is far more impressive in person than on paper, we both know.) He says there are a lot of bridges. And everywhere the graduate students take them, out for dinner and to the bars, sports paraphernalia on the walls. So many people wearing jerseys. Penguins. Pirates. Steelers. Sounds like a fantasy novel to me.
“People don’t say ‘yinz’ as much as I expected,” he says. “And they don’t really like it when I say it, but they’re all super friendly. I don’t think I’ve ever talked to this many strangers before. Plus, it’s super cheap to live here. And one of the professors was really excited you’re a writer. She said she could probably help you get a job at the university press.”
“That sounds boring,” I say.
“You never know! Dude, it’s so cold here, though. It would be hard. But I’ve seen women wearing these full-length fur coats. I bet you’d look really good in one.”
I spend lunch looking up neighborhoods and apartments in Pittsburgh. There’s no harm in imagining, for now, running away to a life of wearing fur and loving sports.
I won’t lie. There is a thrill and rush to the reporting, to the deadlines and the potential scoops. In my second week, a major company bought a startup for an enormous sum of money, making the young founders ridiculously rich. I’d recently seen a friend from high school who worked at the bank that managed the startup’s funds. I texted him and asked if he knew anything interesting about the acquisition. He replied that he did. Would I want to know how much each major player made from the sale? I checked with my editor, who checked with his editors; they all said absolutely—it was a huge scoop. Did I think the source was legitimate? How much was the source willing to put on the record? My friend thought it would be easier than this. That he’d give me the information and I’d publish it, no complications. But no, there was much more to negotiate, and as we did, he grew increasingly worried about his letting this secret out. Would he be traced back as a leak? Would he lose his job over it? What he had considered a fun little thing to do had turned into a threat. He wanted to take it back. My bosses said: Do what you can to keep the source on board. I told my friend not to worry. It wouldn’t be traced back to him. We wouldn’t reveal his or the bank’s name. We would say, “a source with knowledge of the startup’s finances,” was that okay? Would that make him feel safe? He said that he also didn’t want my name attached to the story. His bosses might one day see that we were friends online and figure it out.
After I agreed, he gave me the percentage breakdowns. One of the founders was halfway to becoming a billionaire. Another was a comfortable hectomillionaire or centimillionaire—terms I had to look up, for people whose net worth is more than $100 million. The rest of the dozen or so employees had become instant multimillionaires. The amount of money was obscene and intoxicating. I gave up the numbers and the byline to another reporter. And though I received no public credit, the adrenaline from obtaining the information, and the internal approval from the editors, kept me happy for some time.
Also: When I interviewed the VP at a tech giant and before we started, he sat at the table with this sad, pleading look and said, Be easy on me. I hadn’t considered how much power I held until that moment, and then I became filled and thrilled by it. I was pleasant during the interview, not because he asked, but because that’s how I always am when I interview people. Smile and nod. Repeat what they say to nudge them into further talking. I’ve learned most people want the opportunity to monologue.
Afterward, I wrote a scathing piece. He sent me an email with a link to the article and a single word in the subject line: ouch.
I showed the email to Tim.
“Good work,” he said. “It matters when it hurts them.”
I was proud, but now I don’t know of what exactly. How did it matter? The company is still thriving. He is still an overpaid executive. And here I am, sitting at the same desk, eating a free, stale bagel for lunch. Proud of my dignity and integrity? Or maybe, more likely, and only, the recognition and attention afforded by others.
It is just a keg inside a fancily decorated refrigerator, which sends out a tweet each time someone gets a drink—there is a built-in motion detector—but still, we call it the Beer Robot. Everyone has a beer on their desk as they type. I don’t know what to do because I’ve forgotten my Pepcid AC, which I usually carry in my bag for these occasions. It doesn’t seem appropriate to drink without antacids and glow red in the workplace. Everyone would think I was wasted. But then again, it doesn’t seem appropriate to withhold from drinking when everyone around me is drinking. They might ask me why I
didn’t have a beer. I would have to explain. They might think I was a square and judging them, which I was not. Or perhaps they’d think I was sober, which also seemed to undermine those in the office who struggled with addiction. Or—
I stop myself. Tim stares at me. “Damn, sorry. I didn’t realize it was going to be such an existential question for you,” he says, then chugs his beer. I go get a cup and fill it one-sixth of the way, and keep it by my computer to show I’m having a good time.
J has long wanted to cure my Asian glow. He says he’ll make a compound that can activate alcohol digestion in the stomach rather than letting it travel straight to the bloodstream, which is what it currently does in my body. I am missing the necessary enzyme to break alcohol down, although “necessary” doesn’t seem quite like the right word. The best part, according to J, of creating a product to cure this problem will be the late-night infomercials he’s envisioned. They will feature before shots of sad, flushed Asian men and women and after shots of happy, pale, but still drunk, Asian men and women. Imagine the music! The sound effects! The funny faces everyone will make! The dance choreography!
There is a decent market for a cure, but not all Asians will need it. Take, for example, my dad and my brother and Jasmine, none of whom get Asian glow, either because they were born with the lucky—better descriptor than “necessary”?—enzyme, or because they drink with such frequency their bodies have adapted.
Jasmine and I go out after work, and I stop in at a Rite Aid to pick up the Pepcid AC. She texts the new photographer, a guy she’s recently hired, though she’s known him for years through the photography community, which is apparently very close-knit and dramatic and incestuous.
“Wait, so are you—”
“Just tell me what you think of him,” she says.
By the time we get to the bar, the other photographer is there, sitting at one of the high tables. He looks like your standard hipster San Francisco white guy—beard, beanie, beer in hand. I try to think of a nicer, more special way to assess him for Jasmine. Artsy and tall is the best I come up with.
The three of us spend the night doing what comes as naturally as breathing: complaining about our jobs. Jasmine goes off about how incompetent the editors and writers are—Not you, though, she hedges—how they expect her not only to go and make photos for so many of their stories but also to clean up after their stupid mistakes in the CMS, without any acknowledgment or thanks for her catching their fuckups. She says that without her, the publication would be sued up the ass for copyright infringement. It’s too much work. That’s why they needed another guy. She waves at the guy, who lifts his glass. I get tipsy and talk about how the editors always tell me how great I am at my job, that my stories are smart and my copy clean. They make me edit other writers’ posts when they’re busy, and you don’t even want to know what that raw copy looks like. Plus, they all pretend like they have nothing to do with my salary, even though they’re all technically my bosses.
“Is that supposed to motivate you?” Jasmine says. “Just ask again for your raise already! It’s all you fucking talk about.”
“This is temporary for me,” the other photographer says. “I already know I won’t be here for long. I need to do something more creative with my life.”
Jasmine glares at him. “You said during the interview you were stoked for this job.”
“Well, I was. At the time. I do really appreciate you hiring me. I need the money,” he says, and smiles.
“You.” She points at him. “You just got here, so you better commit to something for once and stay until I say so. And you.” She points at me. “You stop using your boyfriend as an excuse and figure out your shit.”
When drunk she is not completely ineloquent, but neither is she kind.
“There’s no right side up, there’s only upside down,” the man outside the corner store says over and over, pacing.
One of the employees walks out. “Hey, buddy, what’s going on here?”
“There’s no right side up, there’s only upside down.”
“You make a good point.”
While J is gone, I am afraid of the dark and ghosts. When I wake up in the middle of the night and need to pee, I lie there in my half sleep wondering if I can hold it until morning, if it is worth getting up and going through the dark spaces to the bathroom. There are more embarrassing fears than this. Like of aliens and clowns and mind control by radio waves. I curse Nickelodeon’s Are You Afraid of the Dark? The answer to which was a resounding yes for ’90s children nationwide. Don’t be ridiculous, I tell myself. Still, I turn on the bedroom light, then the living room light, then the kitchen light, then the bathroom light. And when I turn off each light behind me, I walk faster toward the lighted areas, until I am back in bed, head under the blanket, having a very difficult time getting back to sleep.
In an all-hands Editorial meeting, the managing editor who is ignoring my request for a raise says the n-word. He says it, several times, in reference to song lyrics relevant to a Culture desk story published on the recent history of how rappers come up with their rhymes. The room stills. It freezes. It becomes too hot. The air dries out. Jasmine coughs. I look at fellow consumer tech reporter and nonwhite person Kevin, who looks at me and raises his eyebrows as if to say, Is anybody going to do or say anything? I blink a lot and my mouth goes dry. Kevin cocks his head and looks as though he is about to speak, but the moment passes. Our new EIC is going on about how he wants us to write more day-two stories with analysis and opinion, not just the day-one news pieces with the facts—our stories can stand apart from the rest with smarter contextualization, because we’re smart, this publication is smart. That’s what we’re known for.
I fidget with the seam of my jeans and stare at the bright spines of old magazines on the lowest shelf of a bookcase. The editors pitch stories. Some are approved, others not. I am worrying about what has been said, worrying that somebody else is worrying about what has been said. Then I realize there are no black men or women on our editorial staff. Not one. Why hadn’t I noticed this before? Am I stupid? There is only Kevin (Latino) and Jasmine (Asian—Chinese) and Mo (Asian—Indian, and the social media associate, who seems to have been on his phone this entire time, as he always is) and me (Asian—also Chinese)—we are not white. There is one black woman in Sales/Marketing, whose name I don’t know, because nobody in Sales/Marketing ever speaks to anybody in Editorial or vice versa, and they are definitely never invited to each other’s meetings.
How had I not noticed? I worry that somebody else in the room is just noticing this at the same time as me, that they are looking at the few of us who are different in the same way that we are looking at ourselves in that moment, as painfully not-them, as other. Or worse, I worry they are not noticing anything amiss at all.
I ask Jasmine if she thinks the managing editor said the n-word because he’s of another generation and hasn’t met enough people different from him—basically, is he too old and too sheltered? He is a white man in his forties, like most everybody here—and doesn’t know that it is violent and offensive for him to say that word, even if he is quoting.
“None of them know shit” is Jasmine’s response. “And they don’t give a shit, either.”
“But maybe—”
“Nope.”
“But—”
“Stop trying to come up with excuses. The answer is: nope.”
Kevin is more optimistic, because he is Kevin, the positivity guy.
He says, “I’m going to send him a note politely explaining that it is inappropriate for a nonblack person to say the n-word. I’m going to send him a really great article that contextualizes the use of the word historically and is a sort of explainer for people. I think he’d appreciate that.”
Word spreads. Or more accurately, words spread. Fast, as usual, in the newsroom. Mo is taken to the gadgets room by the managing editor and the EIC. We peek over our screens to watch them sitting there on those couches, talking with ster
n looks, all three of them very straight and stiff. We refresh Twitter on our screens to keep abreast of new commentary, takedowns, and words of support. Mo’s tweets now have hundreds of retweets and likes. The longer the words remain, the more attention they get; the numbers tick upward, not like the countdown of a bomb, though we all still sense the buildup of an impending implosion. (“Twitter’s blowing up!” one writer says.) A chorus of voiceless voices responds: This editor should be immediately fired! Disgusting! and Not to defend the guy or anything, but wasn’t he just quoting? Maybe I don’t get it and WOW, IT’S 2013, HOW IS THIS STILL HAPPENING and cool for putting him on blast instead of just handling it with him in person like a decent human. just saying.
Mo exits the room and returns to his desk, avoiding eye contact with us all. He clicks and taps. We refresh and watch. His earlier tweets vanish. In their place, he’s written,
I have spoken with the editor in question and he has apologized. (1/5)
I, too, apologize for sharing a private editorial discussion on a public forum. (2/5)
It was not my intention to harm the editor, only to share my concern over the use of a historically degrading word. (3/5)
I know that the editor did not mean harm and am satisfied with his apology. (4/5)
My hope is that any continuing discussion will exclude attacks on him or the publication for which we work. (5/5)
Half an hour later, the managing editor and the EIC exit the room. They retweet all of Mo’s new tweets.
“I’m going to quit, say good fucking riddance to that place,” I say, entering our house. I throw myself dramatically on the couch. “Wherever we’re going, I’ll find a job there. Or I’ll get somewhere else to hire me remotely. Like, how likely is it that this guy is going to give me a raise? Unlikely to never happening. You should tell me more about this university press thingy in Pittsburgh. God, I need a new job! Can I just quit? Or should I wait? I have no money! Hello? Are you listening?” I look up at J.
“Huh?” He turns from the stove. He pulls his earbuds out. “Were you talking to me? I was just listening to this crazy Radiolab episode. What were you saying?”
Days of Distraction Page 5