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