“We’ll table the discussion for now. You have a press conference at three. Your briefing is on the table. Call me to discuss!”
I let out another scream as something heavy and expensive is hurled at me and shatters over my head. Then I’m safely on the other side of the door while my dog barks his head off.
“Well.” I straighten my clothes and take a sip of my ice coffee in my oversize pink Stanley cup. “This job is going to be harder than I originally planned.”
The managerfrom hell folds her hands over her pregnant belly and wrinkles her nose like she smells something horrible.
“You want… staff…”
“I just think it might be more helpful in managing McCarthy if I can tag-team it, you know?” I mime dodging punches.
“It sounds like,” she says, reaching for a bottle of lotion on her desk, “this job is too much for you.” A puddle of lotion globs in Bethany’s hand with a squelch.
I keep smiling as the smell of rose water and coconut wafts through the room.
“In your Personal Improvement Plan,” she says as she rubs her belly under her shirt—no stretch marks for Bethany—“we agreed that you were going to be solution-focused and not blame others for your failures.”
Said PIP sits on her desk, taunting me.
“Like I told HR, I really don’t think the failure of the Rex Montagueaccount was a hundred percent on me. If I’d had a little more support from the company when the client was trying to pressure me to spend some quality time in his unlicensed sex dungeon—and, might I add, I was never given any accolades for covering that shit show up in the press—”
Bethany’s nostrils flare. “Or maybe you did actually sleep with him and you are lying and trying to make yourself look like some sort of victim so that you aren’t publicly dragged through the mud for stealing a married man.”
“I feel like we’re not talking about the Rex account anymore. And your husband came on tomeat the Christmas party.”
“You were wearingthat dress.” She reaches for the lotion bottle, her greasy pregnant belly prominent between us.
“That dress was too small, and if you’d given me a raise—which, again, points us back to the fact that there isn’t a sex-dungeon section on Rex’s Wikipedia page, I feel like I actually did a bonus-worthy job on that. Had I been given a bonus, I could have bought a new dress, one that fit and covered my boobs.”
A tentative knock on the door snaps me back to reality before I can futilely argue my case. Again.
Bethany’s eyes snap up. “I’m talking to Jenna about the Svensson account.”
The eyes of the brown-haired man who knocked bug out. “McCarthy? He’s here? Oh my god.” Arty clutches at his throat and slumps in the doorway, fanning himself. “I need to take sick leave. I can’t handle this. Maybe short-term disability?”
Bethany’s lip curls up. “Yes, it was clear when you started crying in my office that you couldn’t handle the job.”
Arty continues to fan himself. “I thought we were dropping the account.”
“We are?” I turn in my chair.
“The CEO said…” Arty wilts under Bethany’s glare.
“It was decided that Jenna should have a shot at it.”
…In other words, Jenna was given an impossible task so that she could fail and be fired.
Cool.
Bethany taps the folder containing my PIP with her pen. “I hope you are able to save this contract.”
“That’s not fair!” Arty yells in protest. Thank God for non-backstabby coworkers.
“Jenna can’t do anything with that monster,” Arty argues. “You can’t hold that against her. No one can bring McCarthy under any type of PR plan. It’s not possible! That’s not fair to Jenna. She can come on the Crosby account. We need another person. She’s good at graphics.”
I make a mental note to bake Arty cookies.
“Jenna promised the Relentis Defense Corp board of directors that she is good with challenging men.” Bethany is not amused that Arty is defending me. “Let’s give her a chance to prove herself. See if she succeeds where both you and Alex failed.”
