When I was 23, I was hired for my first office job as an executive assistant at a management consulting firm in Cambridge, MA. I served as admin support for three brilliant management minds, one of whom used to work in the military and helped invent email. I only half understood what they did, or what I did for that matter. But I learned what I needed to: Create slide decks, book travel, write up meeting minutes, make coffee.
At one point we got one of the very first video conferencing systems available and I was the only one who knew how to set it up. (It was the late 90s, so this was groundbreaking.) If you moved too much it would cause the video to skip and blur, so if you were using it during a meeting, you had to sit very, very still.
Looking back I can’t believe the power and access I had. I couldn’t possibly appreciate it when the firm’s president, Tom H. Lee, asked me to set a meeting with the CEO of Teradyne, to get a note to Peter Drucker, and could I please get Jack Welch on the phone.
I had been slowly emerging from a post-college slump, a depressed and anxious state where I had cast about from temp job to temp job, afraid to settle on or commit to anything, for fear I’d end up in the wrong spot, the wrong job, the wrong life. I had been eating ramen over the sink and watching Talk Soup on a constant loop, wondering when my life would start.
And this job was the start. I had a reason to get up and get dressed and show up somewhere by 8:30am. People were waiting for me and would notice if I wasn’t there. Was it a job I had wanted? Maybe not. But it was the job I needed. And I had risen to the surface again, happily splashing around, busy, involved. And after nearly a year, the job became old hat and I started to wonder if there might be something else I could do.
And there was. The two women who ran (and comprised) the marketing department were looking for a marketing assistant. They thought maybe I’d be interested. It was clear they liked me—they laughed at my jokes, invited me to their meetings, observed that I had strong writing skills and a winning personality. They told me I was a real asset. They told me would interview me (wink, wink), and they did, in their office, over salads from Whole Foods.
I figured I had it in the bag.
Then a tall blonde woman I’d never seen came in one day; I saw her shake hands with the marketing women and they went into their office and closed the door.
Just a formality, they said. They had to consider all the prospective candidates.
I didn’t get the job. They told me they’d decided to hire “from the outside.” They’d gone with the woman I’d seen, the tall, rangy former volleyball player with the heavy blonde bangs.
I went into an empty office, closed the door, and called my mother, heaving and sobbing. Why would they choose someone they didn’t know? I thought they liked me. I thought they believed I could do it. My mother told me I was in a state and I should really go home now and take a nap.
My eyes were puffy and raw when I slipped into the HR manager’s office and told her I was leaving for the day. “OK, but I don’t understand why you’re so upset,” she said. Her eyebrows were puzzled, but her eyes were blank.
Ah. So this is where business and personal part ways, where you’re meant to accept business decisions with cold, reasonable hands, and move on. This, I knew, wasn’t the last of the professional disappointments, but it was the first, so it stung. I had seen for myself how a relationship might not be what you think it is, and that you had to keep going, just the same.
The woman’s name was Janice, and she started the following week. She was cheerful and well-meaning, and turns out, not that bright. I felt a vengeful little pinch of joy when Janice submitted her slides to me to create for her presentation, rife with misspellings. I didn’t correct her. Everyone should get credit for their work.
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