work it, girl: glam part one

Summer jobs can be dangerous. I mean this both literally and figuratively. For example, let's suppose that your father makes you don steel toe boots and a hard hat when you are 18 years old and throws you on the swing shift at the local steel factory so that you understand from the top of your pretty little head all the way down to your pedicured toes that your life "could be very different.*"

If, say, we do suppose this, then we can also safely suppose that you will spend your summer dodging a myriad of very real dangers in the form of questionably licensed overhead crane operators, unidentifiable red levers on machinery that everyone--you are pretty sure--assumes you can identify, and truckers who inexplicably greet you every single morning with "Hello Little Red Riding Hood, it's the big bad wolf."

Summer jobs can also be figuratively dangerous. There may not be glowing red coils of steel or any other assortment of objects seemingly designed to cut off appendages to tip you off to a figuratively dangerous summer job, but there are other indications, namely that the job is neither lucrative (or paid) nor even remotely related to the vague outline of a career path you sketched for yourself in that one lucid moment you have had since your undergraduate studies regarding what you want to do with your life.

While figuratively dangerous summer jobs can be found in any city in the country, there is doubtlessly a concentration of them in Manhattan. You may (or may not--just go with it, people) be asking yourself how it is that so many reasonably sensible young people with hotshot degrees and Elle Woods ambition get caught up in such jobs in New York? Well, I've got a one word answer for you: GLAM.

GLAM does not discriminate.
GLAM knows no gender, race, or socio-economic class.
GLAM doesn't care that you planned on being a lawyer, a kindergarten teacher, or an accountant with excellent health benefits.
And GLAM really doesn't care that you owe your landlord $2500 next Wednesday.

Tomorrow: work it, girl: glam part two

*Sure is, dad. Now I can add illegal forklift operating to my list of secret talents.

work it, girl: glam part two

If GLAM can lead Harvard graduates with degrees in business to work the midnight shift at The Metropolitan Museum of Art for $7.00 an hour, then I shouldn't be so surprised that it lead me to work at a posh gym headquartered in the Flat Iron District for a salary that was so low I'm still paying off the year's worth of Starbucks I had to put on my credit card.* What can I say? GLAM jobs make you dumb.

Other indicators that you have been sucked in by the GLAM?

1. You mistake mere proximity to the cool people's offices as validation--as in, well, I'm in the same building as Anna Wintour/Oprah Winfrey/Walt Disney Junior...

2. You mistake your employee identification card with the GLAM logo for a legitimate show and tell prop at dinner with your parents, friends, roommates...

3. You mistake company T-shirts, water bottles, and vinyl knapsacks for fair compensation for your 12 hour days.

4. You mistake your very sophisticated title (such as "Client Experience Arbitrator" or "Ambiance Associate") for anything except what you actually are--because you are uncertain exactly of what you are and, well, slave is a bit outdated and technically illegal.

The gym where I work prided itself on single-handedly making working out sexy again--not unlike Olivia Newton John did in the '70s and Jennifer Beal did in the '80s.

Gym X appealed to the snob in New Yorkers--the same snob that pays $39 for a sea salted caramel truffle. Monthly memberships cost more than most people elsewhere in the country pay each month on their mortgage.

Gym X's corporate office was minimalist by design and ran mostly by gay men and Bianca. Bianca oversaw (as one says in polite company) a marketing team that created ads with a more than slightly creepy resemblance to Calvin Klein's during his little child pornography phase. Even now, five years later, I see the the glossy ads posted on bus stops or the sides of slick buildings whenever I'm in a city with a high snob demographic. All of the ads invariably show Kate Moss and Ashton Kutcher look-a-likes engaged in well...NOT EXERCISE. Inexplicably, mud, leather wristbands, and torn t-shirts are almost always involved. Oh, Bianca.



To this day, I'm uncertain what I did there. Aside from notifying Front Desk Associates when Ethan Hawke or Jesse from Saved by the Bell was on the way to work out and sneaking into Tae Low High Spinning Yoga classes on my lunch break, I mostly just cared for the 100 year old Bonsai tree in the CFO's office I was mistakenly given when he was fired on my first day. Yes, I got lucky and pulled off what normally takes someone 25 years to pull off in Manhattan--a corner office. Had the floors not been made of exceptionally hard teak wood, I would have slept there since it was bigger than my apartment on the Upper West Side. It took my immediate boss (who I never actually met--we had a Charlie and Angel kind of relationship) seven months to realize the mistake. But by then, the GLAM had worn off and I quit.

*Hey Ryan, this is for you, since I must give credit where credit is due. Starbucks is considered a non-negotiable in my life regardless of my checking account balance. As are highlights and flights with no layovers.

Designing Women - Julia The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia Speech

the cardigan chronicles

November 25, 2008
School Day #58 (is that all!!!???)
English 3, Period 4

They would not shut up.

Me: That's it. I'm done. I understand the play.

I closed my copy of Macbeth and went to my desk.* Willow came to me lightly, beseechingly. She honed in on her $2,000 Aura Motorola cell phone, which I had taken from her sometime during Act 2. According to Willow, the phone's exquisite interface and 62-carat sapphire crystal lens was aspired (inspired, Willow, inspired!) by the design of high end watches, such as the TAG Heuer her brother wears. Apparently the Lexus for her birthday wasn't enough.

Willow: Ms. M! Please please please can I have my phone? My parents will massacre me!

Me: A massacre, Willow, implies slaughtering a quantity greater than one. For your parents to inflict massacre by definition would require that they slaughter more than just you.

Willow: Miss M., pleeeeeeeease. I studied, like, so hard for this test today, and I know I did good..."

Me: Well, Willow. The word is well. You may have done good, but you certainly didn't do well. Well is an adverb and good is an adjective and did is a...um, what does your test have to do with your illegal texting in my class?**

Willow: Miss M.! If I get my cell phone taken away. They'll call my parents.

Me: You already did get your cell phone taken away, Willow.

Willow: If you take my cell phone to the office, Miss M., they'll call my parents. They'll kill me. And I'm supposed to leave town for Thanksgiving.

Me: Where are you going?***

Willow: Vail.****

I handed back the phone.

Me: Happy Thanksgiving, Willow. Don't do it again. You shall never experience such leniency on my part again.

Willow (jumping up and down): Miss M. I love you! Thank you thank you thank you. Wait, experience what?

*This move on my part may seem harsh to those who have never helmed a classroom full of 16 year olds. However, I assure you that ending the very lesson to which no one is paying attention midway through is classified as HIGHLY EFFECTIVE among high school teachers. Such a move may also be classified as a preemptive one on my part.

**I know the answer to this before the question is out of my mouth. There is no connection. This move, which is intended to disorientate authority figures with its faulty logic, is classified as HIGHLY EFFECTIVE in the minds of all 16 year olds.

***This move is not strategic in nature. I'm just being nosy.

****Of course she's going to Vail for Thanksgiving. Of course she is.

anyone hiring?

It dawned on me this morning that I have to find a summer job. My professorly* skills are applicable and therefore exchangeable for cash only nine months out of the year, which leaves me in the most unfortunate position of having to break the most solemn vow I ever made to myself: I SHALL NOT WAIT ON ANOTHER TABLE.

Particularly bitter corollaries to this vow included

I SHALL NOT FOLD ANOTHER WHITE NAPKIN INTO A BOAT, A FAN, THE SMALL OF A WOMAN'S BACK, OR ANY OTHER INANIMATE OBJECT OR PERVERSE GEOMETRIC SHAPE THAT THE GM DREAMS ABOUT THE NIGHT BEFORE.

I SHALL NOT POLISH ANOTHER PIECE OF SILVERWARE THAT COSTS MORE THAN THE GRADUATE SCHOOL EDUCATION I WAS FINANCING.

I SHALL NOT SERVE LAMB TO THE NEW YORK TIMES FOOD CRITIC (and I do mean THE as in THEEEEEEE New York Times Food Critic) WHO ORDERED, ummmm, BRANZINO?

I SHALL NOT AGAIN NARROWLY ESCAPE MY OWN DEATH AT THE HANDS OF AN IRATE** CHEF OVER A STUPID LITTLE LAMB PROBLEM.

I SHALL NOT SPEND 95 MINUTES MAKING AN EXTRA FROTHY EXTRA EXTRA HOT HALF CAF HALF DECAF CAPPUCCINO WHICH INCREASES MY TIP BY ABOUT 10 CENTS IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PRE THEATER DINNER RUSH BECAUSE Hey lady, This is Manhattan and freaking Starbucks is across the street. TWICE.

*Yes. Guilty. I made this word up and yet, you knew exactly what I meant...
**The phrase "irate chef" is admittedly a little redundant. Chefs, by nature, are irate, which explains why they are so good at using sharp knives, tossing smallish, helpless animals into ovens or boiling pots of water, and throwing root vegetables and heirloom tomatoes at your head.