by Roxy Jacenko
That last sentence didn’t really even make sense, but Rosa clearly thought it sounded impressive. That’s the problem with the internet these days. Just as you can google a headache and convince yourself you have five types of cancer, you can also google ‘workplace discrimination’ and think you have a case worthy of Law & Order.
As I sat there trying to think of a polite way of telling Rosa to take a hike, she took matters into her own hands. ‘I’m sorry, Jasmine, but if you don’t agree to my very fair requirements I’m going to have to suspend my employment while I seek legal advice. Of course, that means I won’t be able to go to London, so the photo shoot will probably have to be cancelled. And Stitched won’t be happy. How much is their contract worth? Isn’t it $60,000 . . . ?’
She let that figure hang in the air. Pleeease! I do not give in to blackmail. I didn’t even need to weigh up whether to give in to her demands. Imagine the example it would set to the other Bees if I started paying her in quarter-hour segments. Would I subtract fifteen minutes every time she visited the bathroom, or logged onto Skype to wave at her boyfriend?
Okay, sometimes I do check my employees’ internet history. What? The office computers are my property. Rosa’s most-visited websites were Skype and Snapchat. She didn’t need either for Queen Bee business so I assumed they were for extracurricular activities. Her boyfriend was probably the one advising her to ask for a pay rise. Well, he was going to be very disappointed when his girlfriend called to update him.
Without another moment’s thought, I picked up the phone on my desk and dialled through to reception. ‘Lulu, please can you fetch a cardboard box for Rosa and leave it on her desk.’ My assistant knew my code by now. A request for a cardboard box means ‘another one bites the dust’.
You might think I’m ruthless, but I don’t have any loyalty to these kids if they don’t have any loyalty to me. I also had to protect the other members of the Queen Bee team. An employee with a negative attitude is like a virus, infecting the rest of the hive and dragging down morale. It was clear from Rosa’s actions that she was not a team player, as she was leaving us in the shit by pulling this stunt the day before her London trip. The collaboration between Savannah and Stitched was the biggest deal we’d struck since starting The Talent Hive. It was part of a twelve-month contract that would see Savannah’s face on billboards and bus stops all across Australia. Every Bee knew that if the client wasn’t happy we wouldn’t win new business. There was a lot to lose on this one.
Yet Rosa was only looking out for number one. Well, good luck and good riddance. Let her go to a rival publicity company. I knew for a fact that the girls at Wilderstein PR were not paid nearly as generously as my Bees. They were certainly not gifted designer handbags, Mercedes Coupés and a fully loaded trip to Glastonbury.
In the early days of Queen Bee, five years ago, I hired a girl called Holly who I then had to fire after it became clear she was a kleptomaniac. She had been stealing samples from the office, not to mention money from my wallet. I’ll never forget it, as it was quite the fraught farewell. In fact, it ended in police escorting Holly out of the building after a punch-up (this is not a common occurrence in my office!).
Since then I had been waiting to see where Holly would pop up next and if she’d try to steal my clients (this is a common occurrence). But the twenty-eight-year-old seemed to have taken a very early retirement. She’d started dating a professional soccer player and become a full-time, fully bankrolled WAG, with the hair extensions to go with the stereotype. In a way, I thought it was a waste. Okay, she was crazy, but she was also a talented publicist – if only she hadn’t been a thief as well.
Then, one morning, I clicked onto The Sun homepage and was confronted with Holly’s photograph, under the headline ‘SOCIALITE ON TRIAL’. The sticky-fingered publicist had been caught with – according to the papers – a dozen fake credit cards under other people’s names. It seems she’d risen from pickpocket to (failed) fraudster since leaving stable employment.
I have a friend in the Sydney police force who forwarded me Holly’s mug shot to give me a giggle. She was wearing the same guilty expression as she had when I’d spotted her in the social pages of The Sun wearing a one-of-a-kind Allison Palmer dress which had gone missing from our showroom the week before.
I knew I shouldn’t laugh at her arrest, but I did. Karma is a bitch and always comes around in the end. The problem is that many PR apprentices seem to think they’re invincible. It’s the Gen Y stereotype; many are over-privileged and think they’re owed a living, rather than needing to work for one like the rest of us. But people in this town have very long memories, so these young girls should be more careful who they screw over. Still, after paying Rosa for her four-week notice period she would no longer be my problem.
Now I just had to figure out who to send to Glastonbury in her place.
15
As Shelley and I settled into our first-class seats, the pilot greeted us over the tannoy: ‘Welcome to your flight to London Heathrow. The flight time is twenty-three hours and thirty minutes. We hope you enjoy your journey.’
Yes, I’d fixed the Glastonbury situation in the best way I knew how – by sending myself. Well, what other choice did I have? I couldn’t prep another Bee in time, and this contract was too important just to wing it. So as soon as Rosa had been escorted from my office, I made two phone calls. The first was to Shelley to see if she fancied a long-haul adventure. Of course she did, once I threw in the words ‘Harrods’ and ‘Harvey Nichols summer sale’. I also thought about inviting Tara, but decided that Shelley and I could do with some one-on-one time, as I had been slightly neglecting her recently.
The second call was to my husband: ‘Hey bud, how’s your schedule looking for the next five days? Busy? Well, I need you to do some imaginative reshuffling. Fifi’s your baby too.’ I’d taken the brunt of the baby work for the past few months and now it was time to pass the baton. See, buddy, you’re not the only one with transatlantic commitments!
I usually prefer to take Fifi on my work trips, but Glastonbury isn’t a place for a two-year-old. I’d thought about taking her: it would certainly be an education, and I could get her some of those cute noise-cancelling earphones I always see Lila Grace Moss and Apple Paltrow wearing at concerts. But that wouldn’t shield her eyes from the vices that are inevitably on display at any festival. I didn’t want to have to explain why the girl in the floral headdress was napping in a puddle or why that man wearing a tiger onesie was handing around little white sweeties. It was far better that I leave Fifi in the hands of her father. It would be a good bonding experience for them. And it’s not like he’d have to quit his day job, as he’d still have the nanny on hand to help him.
Michael scoffed when I told him about the trip. ‘You and Shelley . . . at Glastonbury? You do know it’s notorious for raining every year, so you’ll be waist deep in mud and sleeping in a tent. It’s a long way from your suite at the Four Seasons.’
I knew that. I’m not a total festival novice. But it was Michael who was behind the times. Didn’t he know that Glasto has gone glam? As our plane started its ascent, and Shelley poured her third glass of champagne (‘We have to keep hydrated’), I pulled out my iPad to show her the photographs of our festival digs.
When I realised that I would have to take Rosa’s place on the trip, I immediately upgraded both the flight and the accommodation. When my staff go on work trips I send them economy. Well, I’m not made of money, and I do send them off with a care package that includes sleeping pills and a neck pillow. But I don’t do cattle class. I’m not a snob: I just choose to be comfortable. A friend of mine who is a fashion designer put it perfectly: ‘Honey, we work like fucking dogs. I’d rather chew my own nuts off than be trapped in a big metal box with those losers for twenty-odd hours.’ He now only flies by private jet. I actually quite like commercial flights. At least there’s the duty-free, plus you never know who you might end up sitting next to. On my last trip to L
A I’d been ‘pod partners’ with Russell Brand, who gave me a peek at the novel he was writing. You never know when a long-haul flight will turn into a networking opportunity.
I’d also upgraded the accommodation. Originally Rosa was going to be staying at the Radisson in Covent Garden and then a teepee at Glasto. As accommodation goes, they were fine, but I wanted fabulous. Shelley and I were now booked into the Bulgari Hotel in Knightsbridge for the first night of our trip. I had a jam-packed day of business meetings in the city, and then we’d follow the fleets of hippies to the festival, where we’d be meeting Savannah and the crew for the Stitched photo shoot. But we wouldn’t be slumming it with the other happy campers; there was no way Shelley would have agreed to come if I’d said the words ‘tarpaulin’ and ‘sleeping bag’.
‘Check this out,’ I told Shelley, proffering her my iPad, which showed a photograph of a tent fit for an Arabian princess, with sweeping silk curtains and real roses growing around the doorway. We would be staying in a five-star ‘pop-up hotel’ that was being erected for the first time on the edge of the Glastonbury site. It had been described as ‘The Ritz of Glampsites’, and consisted of 138 tents. But these weren’t tents as you or I remember from Girl Scouts. The poshest tent – the Treehouse suite – cost over $10,000 for the long weekend, and had four double beds, three bathrooms, Persian rugs on the floor and antique furniture. It also had a butler on hand to cater for the guests’ every whim (champagne the night before and iced Earl Grey tea and scones the morning after. How very British!). I’d tried to book the Treehouse suite for Shelley and me, but apparently Beyoncé and Jay-Z beat me to it . . .
The good news was that our tent was only slightly less luxurious. As well as a flat-screen television it had free wi-fi, electric heating and air-conditioning (not that I expected to need that in England). Our canvas castle was also conveniently close to the ‘spa tent’ where festival-goers could book in for a massage, pedicure or facial. It seemed a waste to even leave to listen to the music.
As Shelley flicked through the photos, nodding in approval, she also had a surprise for me. I had booked a private chauffeur to drive us the four hours from London to the festival, but Shelley had been doing her own research. ‘Nobody who is anybody drives to Glastonbury,’ she exclaimed, sloshing her champagne as we hit a patch of turbulence. ‘Do you really want to be stuck in a traffic jam with thousands of beer-swilling revellers? Oh no, darling, we’re arriving in style . . .’ Unbeknown to me, my best friend had booked a private helicopter to shuttle us from London to a heli-pad down the road from the festival. According to rumours, Justin Timberlake would also be choppering in the same morning as us. Now I was really starting to get excited. I felt like a freaking rock star. After the last few months, this was exactly the adventure I needed.
Plus, the bigwigs at Stitched were delighted that I’d made the effort to fly to London to oversee their photo shoot rather than sending a rooky. It was a win-win situation and I was suddenly very happy that I’d taken on the task myself. It would be fun. What could possibly go wrong?
It seems I’d overlooked one rogue factor . . . Savannah Jagger. I knew she could be difficult, but over the next week she surpassed all of my worst expectations. I should have predicted the blogger would be a handful after she’d thrown a tantrum when we booked her tickets because she couldn’t bring her dog over with her from Sydney. I had to explain the term ‘quarantine’.
That was just the first strop of many. She was a punish and a half. Don’t be fooled by her smiley-faced Instagram photos, this girl is a living nightmare. By the end of the trip, it felt like an out-of-body experience.
It all started before Savannah even landed in London. I had lined up an interview with a reporter from the Daily Mail, who wanted to talk to Savannah about how she’d become an Instagram icon (she has 500,000 followers and counting). It was a great opportunity for the fashion blogger and was only happening because I’d called in a favour with their showbiz editor, Minky Barton. When Kate and Wills were visiting Australia I’d helped her out with a scoop by getting her an interview with the Sydney hair stylist who gave the duchess a fringe trim. That kind of insider knowledge carries a lot of currency.
I’m not sure that Savannah really appreciated the opportunity. When I emailed her to line up an interview time, she replied, ‘The Daily Mail? Can’t we get Grazia magazine instead?’ She then uttered the two words every journalist dreads – copy approval. ‘You can tell them I’ll only do the interview if they send through the questions in advance for me to approve,’ she huffed. ‘I don’t want to be put on the spot and made to look stupid. I know how these journalists work. I’ve watched How to Lose Friends & Alienate People.’
I tried to convince her that she didn’t have anything to worry about. This was a light-hearted article (I nearly said ‘puff piece’ but caught myself at the last minute) and they wouldn’t have any hidden agenda. They just wanted to hear about her clothes, her favourite shopping spots, and the power of social media. It wasn’t an undercover investigation.
But she was adamant. ‘If I don’t see the questions I won’t do the interview. And I won’t talk about my private life, how much money I earn or how much money I spend. It’s none of their fucking business.’
This would leave the journalist with very little to work with. I wondered what Savannah was hiding. She wouldn’t be the first blogger to be drowning in debt, living the high life on a pile of overburdened credit cards.
This phone conversation took place while I waited in the customs line at Heathrow Airport. Savannah was about to board her own plane at Sydney and her last words to me were, ‘Make it happen or I’m pulling out of the interview.’
I waited until Shelley and I had checked in to the Bulgari and been shown to our suite before booting up my laptop and emailing Minky. She was not going to be happy. Every journalist I know hates sending questions in advance of an interview, because it makes the conversation stilted. They can’t go with the flow if they’re locked down to bullet points. Also, no one likes to be told how to do their job.
As expected, Minky’s response was seriously pissy.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Re: Savannah Jagger the superstar blogger
I don’t mean to sound like a bitch, Jasmine, but are you kidding me? I spent this morning interviewing P. Diddy and he didn’t ask for a list of interview questions, and yet this little blogger wants special treatment. This is ridiculous.
I have never, ever sent through a list of interview questions before the event in my life, and I’m slightly offended that you’d even ask me to. I lined up the interview with Savannah because you’re a friend and I wanted to make the story happen, but I can just as easily find another fashion blogger to interview. I have Rumi Neely from Fashion Toast on speed dial and she’s in town for Glastonbury too.
You need to tell your dear Savannah that she needs to seriously rethink the way she deals with the media. She’s a public figure now and there are going to be questions about her private life. I just looked at her Instagram feed and there are photos of her snogging her boyfriend, with full tongues on show, and pictures of her playing volleyball topless. You can’t tell me this girl is shy and worried about her reputation.
Err, sorry to rant. Feel free to forward this email directly to Savannah, as she’s the one I have the issue with. I still love you, Jazzy Lou. As usual, you’ve been nothing but helpful and amazing. But you do need to get your blogger to toe the line. This girl is a lampshade: you feel less bright just being in the room with her!
Minky x
P.S. We’ll pass on the interview for now, thanks. It just isn’t worth the effort from our end.
P.P.S. Could you get me an interview with Miranda Kerr? Now I would LOVE to talk with her.
I groaned out loud when I read Minky’s response. Although she wasn’t blaming me, it certainly wasn’t a win for me professionally. Damn it. I closed the leather c
over of my iPad case with a snap and threw it onto the bed, where it bounced off the mountain of scatter cushions and fell onto the floor.
‘What’s up?’ asked Shelley. ‘You look as if you’ve just heard that Fashion Week is cancelled.’ My travel buddy was sitting at the dressing table, clad in the hotel’s complimentary silk robe, flicking through a brochure for the gym on the top floor.
‘Oh, you know, the usual,’ I sighed. ‘A battle of the egos between semi-celebrities and journalists. I wish they could all just play happily together and realise they need each other. I feel like a diplomat sometimes, trying to get everybody to compromise.’
Shelley picked up an apple from the complimentary fruit bowl and threw it at my head. ‘You know what you need, Jazzy Lou? A workout! That’ll get you in a better headspace.’
To my amazement, our kiddie yoga class had triggered a health kick in my friend, who was now dropping into conversation phrases like ‘resistance training’ and ‘calorie expenditure’. She’d started going to a yoga class every morning with a muscle-bound teacher called Keenan who had a reputation for being very ‘handsy’. If I didn’t know better, I’d say Shelley was prowling for a partner.
Whatever her motivation, all the exercise was paying off. The previous week she’d called me in happy hysterics because she’d bought a size ten dress – and had actually fitted into it. She’d even started mixing her champagne with orange juice, and swapped her vodka and Coke for vodka and tonic. For Shelley this was serious progress.
Despite the jetlag migraine throbbing at my temples, a visit to the gym actually wasn’t a bad suggestion. I very much doubted that a workout would cheer me up, but a session of celebrity spotting might help. I happened to know that the gym at the Bulgari Hotel was frequented by London’s most famous fitness fanatics. It’s run by celebrity trainer James Duigan, who honed the bods of Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Jennifer Lawrence, and Australia’s most luscious export, Elle Macpherson. The gym is so exclusive that to be a member you have to submit an application to a board, who judge whether you’re of high enough calibre to join.