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I start to answer, but Rebecca is on a roll. “If I had to guess, I’d say three… four hours at the most.” More like two or three on a bad day, but I am not about to correct her. Not on this. “You do nothing, which I turn a blind eye to, and pay you a shit-ton of money for it.”
True… so unbelievably true. It should be considered a crime the way I’m taking her money. “I appreciate your willingness to work with me. Also, the very generous pay.”
“I couldn’t care less about you appreciating me. What I want is for you to stop being so socially awkward for one night and be a Team. Player. Or you can kiss your couch goodbye. Understood?”
I have no choice. I can find another WFH job but not one that pays so high and lets me get away with doing so little. “Understood.”
2
Mark
“Everything okay?” I ask, more out of politeness than concern once my assistant Amber gets off the phone.
She’s normally good about not using her phone during business hours, but this morning she has been huddled up in the corner for an hour, talking to someone. I couldn’t hear what was being said, just a lot of mumbles and gasps.
“I’m sorry about that, boss. Minor emergency. Won’t happen again.”
I nod my head in acceptance of her apology and go back to reading the documents in front of me, expecting Amber to follow my lead. Instead, she sits down and veers us straight into a topic I’d hoped we’d avoid today.
“You still going to that mixer thing tomorrow?”
The mixer thing she is referring to is Valentine’s Day dinner, set up by a matchmaking service called Forever Love. They rented out a restaurant for the evening and anyone willing to pay the whopping two hundred dollar fee will meet their date for the night once they get there.
It’s my first time using this service, so I’m not sure what to expect. They do boast a personal touch, setting up matches themselves without the use of some computer program. Maybe a little too personal. I had to go to their office to fill out my profile, an experience I’d sooner forget. The lady I met with made it clear she was on the menu, an offer I have no intention of taking.
Amber hates the idea. Calling the service a scam but when I ask why she won’t elaborate due to what she calls “the best friend code.” Whatever that means.
“Yep. I haven’t changed my mind.”
“I mean, it’s giving desperate vibes, but I guess it’s okay if you go.”
This is a turn of events. “Thank you for your permission, Amber. It’s what I live for. By the way… desperate is exactly the vibe I was going for. Glad I achieved it.”
Judging by the disapproval in her eyes, Amber did not appreciate my response. Focusing back on her laptop, she snaps, “It’s the sarcasm for me.”
“It’s the misspellings in the emails to clients for me.” I get a full-body laugh for that one. Amber gets a kick out of me speaking the lingo.
One of the side benefits of hiring an assistant ten years younger than me is that my vocabulary has increased by leaps and bounds. Nothing I can use unless I’m talking to someone in her age group, but still, it’s nice to be in touch with the trends. We share an office space, so I get schooled on it every day. The setup of the office building I rented has a separate space for her outside the main office, but we found it easier to work side by side, setting up a U-shaped desk large enough for both of us. Amber goes to law school at night, so she has a lot of questions, ones I don’t mind answering. It keeps me on my toes and my brain moving.
Friendly banter over with, we get back to the boring business of employment law. Don’t get me wrong I love helping employees get what’s owed to them from their penny-pinching employers, but the paperwork is tedious and mind-numbing.
Good thing I have Amber. My former assistant was as stale as day-old bread and less useful. Amber might make the occasional spelling mistake, but her enthusiasm for life and the work we do is contagious. She firmly believes in employee rights, but instead of complaining on public forums about the lack of them, she fights from within, ensuring that her voice is heard. She also sets me straight when I get too full of myself.
I try to focus, but something she said is nipping at the back of my mind. “How is it desperate?”
Amber glances up from the brief she’s typing, the look on her face one you would give a child when they ask why they have to go to school. “Because, Mark, only desperate people pay what you did for some lame Valentine’s blind date festival.”
“It’s not a festival. It’s an upscale dinner at a reputable steakhouse.” Okay, I’m embellishing a little. The steakhouse isn’t that nice. It’s more of a family-style joint, with meat-related decor, buckets of peanuts by the front door, and paper tablecloths for the kids to draw on. Two hundred dollars is way too much to pay for a place of that caliber, but like Amber said—I’m desperate.
At thirty-five, I’m ready for a wife and kids, someone to come home to, someone to love. I want what my parents have. They’ve been married for almost forty years but behave like they just met yesterday. I’m an only child, so the grandchildren guilt is strong.
I’ve tried meeting women at the supermarket, work, and even been set up by friends. You don’t realize how little your friends know about you until they set you up on a date. Amber even hinted at meeting one of her friends, but I’m not too sure about dating someone in their early twenties. I can barely keep up with Amber. I don’t know much about the friend she selected, putting a stop to her matchmaking the moment she uttered the words, “I have a friend,” but I’m sure they’re just like her.
So since nothing I’ve done is working, online dating it is. In the grand scheme of things, two hundred isn’t too much to pay for potentially meeting your future wife.
“Yeah right. I’ve been to Howie’s Beef ‘n’ More. Upscale it is not,” Amber scoffs. “Besides, I told you what to do. You need to go talk to that chick next door.”
Amber is convinced my neighbor, who, one, I’ve never met and, two, I’ve never seen leave their apartment, is the woman for me. I’ve lived in that apartment complex for a week now and haven’t caught a whiff of them. I guess I could ask one of the other tenants about them, but I’m not that interested. If they want to be left alone, who am I to mess with that?
