“I may not know a lot about makeup, but I am a total skincare junkie,” I admitted to him. “I don’t know, something about the pretty little containers just makes me such a girl! You know?”
He nodded in agreement. “Beauty product packaging can be very exciting.”
We intensely discussed the value of a toner at great length. “I wouldn’t recommend it for dry skin,” I advised him. “But if you have oily skin, the toner is instrumental in closing your pores. It is key to preventing blackheads and blemishes.”
He was immensely impressed with my vast knowledge of facial skincare.
“Sell me this fragrance,” he challenged me.
He handed me an elaborate pink bottle with a gold spritzer. I laughed. No amount of marketing prowess could get this short, fat man to buy this shit. He already had short man syndrome as it was. The last thing he needed was women’s fragrance.
“This is not fragrance.” He said dramatically and spritzed a pungent mist that I will forever associate with bullshit. He paused for effect. “It is a dream in a bottle.”
“Wow.”
As it were, not only did Oompa Loompa love the smell of bullshit, he was also the new VP of Human Resources transferred from the global head office to whip Gisele’s Canadian office into shape. I also speculated that his appreciation for me extended to the fact that, having gained a Beyoncé-booty from my MBA diet of Kraft Dinner and Mr. Noodles, I now looked like a dirty librarian in my once well-fitting business suit.
“I want you to give your resume to Angela.” He gestured to the cold hard bitch. “Tell her that I asked you to.”
“Oh no, I’m not —” I began to clarify that I wasn’t interested, but stopped myself. What did I have to lose? If anything, I could build up my interview experience and skills so I’d have the confidence to wow Amnesty International when they interview me. “I’m not quite ready to submit my resume yet. I’m still working on it.”
“Here’s my business card. E-mail me your resume later this week and I will arrange an interview.”
The idea of dedicating my career to selling lipstick was as nauseating as the dream in a bottle that he had just spritzed all over me.
“One last very important question.” He said as I took his card. The next few words sent a shiver of excitement down my spine. “Paris or New York?”
“Pardon me?”
“Where would you rather work? Paris or New York?”
“I thought the job was here in Toronto?” I was visibly flabbergasted. New York? When does a Canadian business grad get the opportunity to transfer to New York straight out of business school with no work experience?
“It is, but within two years you can transfer to Paris or New York if you wish.” He smiled, deducing from my reaction that he had hit the bull’s eye.
“New York!” I exclaimed, feeling my cheeks flush with excitement. The head office of Amnesty International was located in New York and if I could sell a dream in a bottle then I could definitely sell equal human rights!
A day after I emailed my resume to Oompa Loompa, I was granted an interview with Gisele. A week later, Gisele held on-campus interviews with the top candidates from my MBA program, and me. I figured my dirty librarian garb would not be as effective with a lady interviewer so I had thrown together a blouse and dress pants from my non-existent business wardrobe. I was feeling very underdressed and plain as I waited in the Career Centre lounge with the other interview hopefuls, who looked like a collection of CIA agents in their serious-looking black suits.
“Is that what you’re wearing to your interview?” Heather, my new frienemy, asked. She was seated neatly in her CIA suit, immaculately groomed with a black leather folder in her lap.
“Yeah, why?”
“You have a big stain on the front of your blouse,” she indicated. A white dried toothpaste mark was smeared across my stomach.
“Oh, shit!” I was about to run to the bathroom to scrub it off when a lady from the Career Centre came to fetch me for my interview. I didn’t know why I was panicking; I didn’t want the job anyway. I could just strategically hold my arm in front of my stomach for the whole interview. Problem solved!
My seventeen minute interview with Angela was a joke. She appeared completely disinterested in my answers as I awkwardly held my cramping arm over the toothpaste stain. I was prepared for the typical, run of the mill interview questions, such as what is your greatest weakness (“I’m a perfectionist!”) and what is your 5-year plan (“It’s my dream to work at your company for my whole career!”).
“Name a personality type you can’t stand,” she asked, bored.
I wasn’t prepared for this question so answered honestly. “I hate arrogant people. They assume they know everything and aren’t willing to listen, learn from others, or improve themselves.”
She laughed. “Encounter many arrogant people in your MBA?”
I blushed, realizing I had vented candidly instead of giving a tactful, proper interview answer.
“I agree.” she said, losing a little bit of the cold bitch edge, just as I was starting to warm up to it. “If Gisele were a woman, what would she be like?”
I drew a complete blank. After what seemed like an agonizingly long pause, I started describing Jackie. “She is confident in herself, knows who she is, is comfortable in her skin. She is fashionable, wears current clothes that are timeless, not trendy. She goes out for drinks after work every night, dates a lot of men, but never past the third date. She has a lot of friends from different circles, but keeps only a few close friends. Red wine and her Blackberry are dear to her heart.”
Angela appeared to be impressed, “Hmm. That’s a very detailed description. It’s like Gisele is a good friend of yours.”
“Well, good brands are like good friends.” I smiled back. Is it just me or does someone smell bull shit? Boo-ya! Take that dream in a bottle.
Angela called me back a week later offering me the job. The cold bitch was gone as she greeted me like a long, lost friend over the phone.
“Really?” I stalled. “Aren’t I supposed to have a second round interview?”
“No, we go by the gut,” she answered happily. They must have had indigestion if they wanted to hire me.
“I’m currently interviewing with other companies…” I lied. The Canadian Amnesty International office was small and was not hiring so I had applied to an Amnesty International USA Field Organizer position. While I was an avid member of Amnesty International, I did not have the qualifications. “How long do I have to get back to you?”
“We could give you one week,” she said generously.
The Career Centre at my school did not cater to non-profit companies so I was on my own. One week wasn’t a lot of time to scope out and approach non-profit companies. It didn’t seem ethical but maybe I could accept the Gisele job as a back-up while I pounded the non-profit pavement. It was clear that I would have to build my volunteer and non-profit business experience to even be considered by Amnesty International USA.
I scoured what I considered to be the top Canadian charities to no avail. I called the Sick Kids Foundation, World Wildlife Fund, the Salvation Army and the Canadian Red Cross Society but all open positions required at least two years of business experience. As my deadline approached, the more I started to panic. Selling lipstick and bottled dreams was slowly turning into my reality.
It was on D-Day that Heather, the toothpaste spotter, asked me in one of our classes whether I had heard back from Gisele.
“They offered me the job about a week ago,” I said as tactfully as possible, knowing that Heather had interviewed for the same position. In fact, she had interviewed for a number of desirable positions. Heather had been a top student her whole life. She interned at Unilever over the summer and had been networking with top tier consumer packaged goods companies for several months. Needless to say, she never had toothpaste stains on her shirts. But she could probably market the hell out of any toothpaste.
“Oh,” she said, disappointed and in disbelief. She offered weak congratulations.
“Thanks for letting me know about the toothpaste stain,” I said sympathetically before I realized that it sounded like I was rubbing it in that she lost out to someone with a stained shirt.
“I didn’t know that you even wanted to work at Gisele. Aren’t you majoring in non-profit organization?”
“And Marketing,” I found myself saying defensively.
“Well, you know you just got the job because you’re good looking,” she said.
I was dumbfounded by her un-MBA-like accusation. Firstly, she was openly admitting I was better-looking than her and secondly, upon reflection, it was a ridiculously easy interview. I thought back to my dirty librarian business suit and my curious conversation with Oompa Loompa. Uh-oh…maybe she had a point.
“Ouch. Jealously doesn’t become you,” I replied.
“I’m not jealous. You should know what you’re getting into.” It did seem like she was referring to a dream in a bottle. “Gisele is a sweatshop. You don’t strike me as the kind of person that would survive in that kind of environment. You should only accept the job if it’s something that you really want. Something that you would give up your life for.” If Heather wasn’t willing to give up her life for it, she was at least willing to give up her dignity, as was evident right now.
“What makes you think that I don’t want it?” I answered, getting increasingly defensive.
“I’m not saying this to psych you out,” she said, reading my mind. “It’s true. Ask anyone.” And she turned on her perfect kitten heel and walked smartly out of class.
I shouldn’t have let a jealous frienemy get to me but my already less than ideal back-up option was starting to crash and burn. I called Lindsay on my way home to give her a play-by-play.
“Have you heard about Gisele? Is it a sweatshop?” I demanded.
“I have no idea,” she laughed. “It sounds like Heather is just jealous. I wouldn’t worry about it. Why don’t you ask to speak to someone from the company?”
“You’re brilliant!” Brilliant, except that my deadline was today.
Faced with no other choice, I resigned myself to accepting the job at Gisele as a contingency plan while continuing my search for a non-profit company. Angela was thrilled with my decision and arranged a meeting with my Director-to-be, Savannah, who would give me more details on the role and responsibilities. On the positive side, Gisele’s compensation was certainly intriguing to someone who had to pay off her MBA student debts. It was doubtful that any non-profit company in Canada could match it. I was torn. I felt guilty taking a job away from someone like Heather who wanted it and because I knew I was only using Gisele until I found something better.
“What’s the worst that can happen?” Calista counseled. “So you work for a couple of years at Gisele, build your resume, diversify your experience, make good money, pay off your student loans. Seems like a pretty good deal. Develop strong business acumen and then transition into non-profit at a more senior level. Don’t feel like you don’t have a choice. Because right now, you have a job that most girls would kill for.”
“You’re right,” I said automatically because Calista is always right. Then I actually thought about it and realized she was right. What’s the worst that could happen?
Chapter 3: Fashion Victim
So, here I was, working for Gisele as a peon, trying to channel the sage advice of Calista and open my mind. If I had not yet resigned myself to being open-minded about my hateful co-workers, I had at least remained open-minded to the career opportunity. With the promise of transferring to New York in two years, I re-focused my energy into beauty business boot camp instead of resenting my colleagues. In my first two weeks, Heidi had given me a litany of business material to read, starting with Gisele’s riveting Lip & Nail segment: business reviews and marketing plans from the past three years; the five year new product pipeline; and the past three years of research.
My boss Savannah, was still in meetings and TV advertising shoots in New York and Heidi warned me that I needed to be fully up to speed on the business by the time she returned or I would be ‘punished’. I found it an ominously strange choice of words.
“What do you mean by ‘punished’? It sounds a little…harsh.” I dared to ask for clarification.
“You don’t want to find out,” Heidi cautioned. It did not seem that Gisele was what you would call a nurturing culture.
Fuelled by fear of punishment, my Lip & Nail immersion amounted to several hours of boredom alone in my cube, hundreds of dead trees, thousands of hours of marketing peon blood, sweat, and tears and more than I ever needed or cared to know about lips and nails. In fact, my opinion of lips and nails had now moved from indifference to slight nausea. Is it OK to resent the people you work with and your product within two weeks of starting a new job?
My brain hurt from trying to process the onslaught of new data and new people. Quite irritatingly, there was an abnormally high usage of acronyms and random French terms, since Gisele’s head office was in Paris and everyone was pretentious. So, not only did I not yet understand what people were talking about, I also literally did not understand what they were saying. It’s like they were speaking another language and I was a visible minority, trying to fit into a foreign culture where all the people were beautiful, well-dressed and evil.
My first impression of my colleagues had not changed in two weeks. In my limited interactions with them, they continued to demonstrate their disdain for me. Their behaviour represented several forms of moral destitution. Human decency seemed to be an uncommon disposition at Gisele and I yearned for companionship that would not lead me to hell. Self-righteousness could be lonely.
Heidi appeared at my cube straight off the cover of Vogue and dumped a PR report on my cube, requesting that I make photocopies for our boss’s bosses without looking at me. I bit my tongue to prevent myself from reminding her that I was not her secretary and decided to humour her in a gesture of goodwill.
While making good use of my MBA education in the photocopy room, I rocked what I believed to be a boho-chic outfit. Sure, people were looking me up and down a little longer than usual, but they were just admiring my easy breezy Cover Girl style.
“Ronnie!” a very gay man approached me excitedly, “We haven’t met yet. I’m Stevie. I’m the Assistant Brand Manager on Fragrances. So nice to meet you!”
I shook his smooth, well-groomed hand. Funny, he seemed genuinely pleased to meet me. “I’m Veronica. Nice to meet you too,” I responded suspiciously and waited for Stevie to demonstrate some sort of amoral behaviour.
“I think it’s great that you can look so pretty even when you’re dressed so grungy!” He gushed.
“I’m dressed grungy?” I asked, betraying my disappointment.
Stevie’s eyes widened upon realization of his inadvertent insult. And with a suppressed gasp and a not-so-suppressed giggle, he fled from the photocopy room in a flourish of this season’s must-haves. I looked down at my un-ironed plaid shirt paired with a men’s vest and harem pants tucked into salt-stained brown Uggs. With a sinking heart, I realized that easy breezy Cover Girl style would probably go over better in the Cover Girl offices.
I returned to Heidi’s cube now painfully aware of my fashion victim status. Heidi and Jasmine Tit were deep in conversation. I stood at Heidi’s cube with the copies she had requested awkwardly in arm, not wanting to interrupt my fashion superiors. Apparently people dressed in ugly clothes were invisible to Heidi and Jasmine Tit. They continued their conversation as if I didn’t exist.
“Hi,” I finally said a little too loudly. They both turned to look at me in contempt and then with incredulousness at my outfit.
“What happened to your outfit?” Heidi recoiled, as if in fear of catching bad fashion.
“How did they let you in dressed like that?” Jasmine Tit asked in confusion. “My boyfriend wouldn’t dare let me leave the apart
ment if I were dressed like that.”
“You’re welcome.” I dropped the copies on Heidi’s desk and returned back to fashion victim exile in my cube.
Several hours later, wallowing in my bad fashion sense and trying to strategically plan my exit, Stevie stopped by my cube with a pile of fashion magazines. “Here, some more reading material. You might pick up some fashion tips. For example, Uggs – just don’t.”
“Thanks for rubbing salt in the wound,” I said miserably.
“No, no, I come in peaceful fashion intervention.” Stevie reassured me. “I’m sorry I upset you. But admitting you have a problem is the first step.”
“I don’t have a problem! You all think I have a problem. There are more important things in life than fashion…” Stevie looked dubious. “…like world peace.” I offered weakly.
“Honey, I’m afraid that while you’re in this world, you do have a problem. Heidi and her BFFs will not leave you in peace until you are their fashion equal. Let me take you out for dinner. I can give you some fashion pointers, such as less is more,” he looked pointedly at my harem pants. “And you can fill me in on world peace.”
“Where?” I asked hesitantly. Stevie’s intentions seemed good. He could be my fashion fairy. He would likely help me burn my outfit.
“Somewhere expensive and fabulous…like your outfit,” he winked.
And so on our first date we went for a liquid dinner at the Drake Hotel. On a school night the Drake tends to attract pretentious and aging wannabe socialites. Cougars with Botox faces and even more questionable fashion sense than my own and metro-sexual, ambiguously gay men spawned hours of conversation.
Maybe it was the martinis talking but I believed that Stevie could very well be my platonic soul mate. It was like he knew the inner workings of my being and could only bring out the most fabulous in me. As opposed to my ex-boyfriends who only contributed to my insecurities and neuroses. But alas, Stevie was never going to be my boyfriend. Or…could he? I mean, albeit a gay one? After all, what was stopping us from hanging out, sharing (lots of) drinks, dreaming about shoes and having him accessorize my outfits? It was love at first fashion mistake. I knew at that moment that I would never call him a douche bag.
Why I Love My Gay Boyfriend Page 2