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I didn’t know what it was about me that made me want to hit the ground running at an hour when the only ones awake were the IRS and God. But that was the way it always was, and it didn’t get any different as I got older. If anything, I tried to find as many ways as possible to trim down how much sleep I needed.
There was far too much to do every day to waste it with my head stuffed under a pillow. It was the reason my dormmates in college hated me, and why nobody wanted to room with me when I got my first apartment. And why, even now, I was always the first person to get to the office in the morning.
I was twenty-three years old when I first started working for Tom Anderson. For the first several months I worked at the office, I showed up at the building so early the only person there was security. Considering the guard didn’t just sit there at the front of the building and wait for people to materialize, I always had to wait for him to finish his rounds and come back through the lobby to notice me.
He would let me in, albeit begrudgingly, and at some point during the day, Tom would come by my desk to point out the security guard complained about me getting there so early. After a while, those visits turned into just him making note of the time I had shown up at the office. It almost became a game to him. Like the night before he would make a guess and wait to see if the next morning he was right.
It took six months of being Tom’s secretary and annoying the security guard by showing up so early before my boss finally just gave me my own code to the building. Since there were security cameras monitoring every door and I still had to swipe my employee identification card before putting my code in, it was fairly secure.
My years working with Tom were more than enough to teach me there was always the possibility of something coming up. It was better to be a touch too ambitious and have your work done pre-dawn than it was to get caught in an unexpected situation and end up behind.
That morning I was sipping on my second cup of hazelnut coffee of the day when I arrived at my desk. I settled in and made sure I had everything I needed before firing up my computer. I reviewed the calendar for the day and picked up the phone.
One of the perks of my unconventional hours was being able to handle time differences far more smoothly than many other people. And since Paris was nine hours ahead of San Francisco, when I needed to call our sister company, my early arrival worked in my favor. Getting to the office and hopping on the phone when many of my colleagues were still asleep meant being able to catch the Paris office in the middle of the afternoon rather than when they had already gotten off for the day.
The phone call connected on the second ring, and a familiar lilting voice answered in French.
“Good morning, Celeste,” I said.
As soon as she heard my voice, the secretary switched over to English.
“Good morning, Amanda,” she said.
I started to continue on the conversation in English, then stopped myself.
“No, let’s try it in French,” I said. “I’ve been working really hard on my lessons, and I want to practice.”
If it had been anyone else who answered, I wouldn’t have tried that, but Celeste and I had formed a friendship over the years since the sister company started. She was the one who’d encouraged me to learn French. This way I would be able to more effectively communicate with our Paris office.
It hadn’t been long since I started taking the lessons, so the practice was valuable.
Once I had the meetings, conference calls, and online webinars put into place, I got off the phone with Celeste. She said something to me in French, wished me luck on my lessons, and we said we would speak soon.
After our conversation was done, I switched my focus to local vendors and clients. There was another list of arrangements that needed to be made that would fill out Tom’s calendar for the next several weeks. Sometimes it could get overwhelming trying to juggle the sheer volume of demands on his time. It was a good thing that I was ultra-organized.
When I’d first started working for Tom, he was a mess. I would never say that to his face. Or, maybe I would, but I would make sure he thought I was teasing him. He was completely unorganized and had no idea how to keep himself on track.
