I work in an office of all women. Twenty-two of them. From the cofounders—Brittany and Ashleigh, who as college roommates decided on a whim with Daddy’s money that their sophomoric passion for PR bested their inexperience and warranted them being their own bosses—to Kiley, our sprightly office assistant who graduated from Stanford five months ago with that illusive degree in communications. As Women in the Workplace or whatever, I’m supposed to think it’s incredible; that the Brit & Ash Agency has been built from nothing and is now changing the game for women in communications everywhere. Really, it’s barely more than two unprofessional bullshitters with perfect bodies and big tits convincing old men to trust their vague “public relations needs” with us. Because what looks better for your boring business than a bunch of hot young women parading it around as important.
The whole thing is ridiculous.
To the untrained eye, it seems like a perfect place to work. There’s an old-school popcorn machine crackling 24/7 behind the reception desk, a neon sign reads “You Better Work Bitch,” a line from Britney Spears’s unforgettable classic, and a chalkboard wall boasts Polaroids showcasing a month’s worth of Outfit of the Days, determined by the cofounders themselves. Add to that the fully stocked kombucha fridge, the FriYay happy hours, and The Home Edit–level rainbow-organized snack pantry, you might forget that you’re expected to work eighty-hour weeks for a midlevel salary with no dental.
I recognized the truth behind this PR facade the second I arrived for my interview. Popcorn is the biggest snack offering because it’s a weight-loss-friendly food; “You Better Work Bitch” isn’t a cultish motto but an expectation: work even when you don’t need to and lean into it; the Outfit of the Day board isn’t only a sexist workplace bonding activity, but also a way for you to feel constantly judged by who you’re wearing and how well it fits you. All three of these things serve to brilliantly establish Brit and Ash’s powerful influence: they tell us what to eat, what to do, and what to wear. But they do it with a giggle and a smile so you don’t question the overflowing condescension. How can someone so pretty be so mean?
If you put a group of professionally tanned and blown-out women in Alice + Olivia pencil skirts and four-inch Celine heels in a room together, it’s not a means to a feminist revolution, but a way to ensure you never want to work with women again.
On top of that, as if we needed to give everyone another reason to hate our half of the species: everyone over thirty synchs up. I’m sure I’m not supposed to reveal this age-old secret, but it’s true. The kids are stuffed with diaphragms and IUDs, but for everyone even remotely close to starting a family, for about fifteen days a month discarded tampons overflow from the bathroom’s garbage. Because of this, four women in the office are currently pregnant, all due within two months, all about to cash in on that six-month, full-pay maternity leave Brit and Ash hoped their “You Better Work Bitch” mindset would keep anyone from redeeming.
Rebecca, a five-foot-eleven blonde who isn’t afraid of four-inch heels, stands in front of the neon sign, mocking it with her protruding basketball of a belly as she adjusts the blue bow in her hair and thanks everyone for the gift: a Bugaboo stroller that costs more than my first apartment. She’s a little bitter that her office shower fell on a Monday, which gives me immeasurable satisfaction as I sit on the edge of a too-low couch watching her dance around the conference room like a fucking ballerina, singing “ah ah ah” anytime someone tries to stick a blue bow onto her cashmere sweater.
Weddings trump pregnancies in this group, which is why all my planning has overshadowed hers. Weddings enter you into a new class; a club of women with shiny accessories proving to the world that we’re lovable, while we show off our newly plural life: we finally found a contractor, our friend works there, we watched that episode last night. Babies, however, bring you down at least three notches until you can brag about their accomplishments. Even then, no one wants to talk about them as much as you do.
“This little nugget says thanks, too,” Rebecca continues, pulling the loose sweater taut around her belly, like we’d forget she is pregnant if she didn’t remind us. “My little Halloween baby is very excited to meet you all soon.” Everyone oohs and aahs but the silence between her sentences reveals how little that sentiment is reciprocated. Another thing: Who the fuck wants a Halloween birthday—destined for themed parties every year for the rest of your life?
For most of the shower, I’d been focused on Kiley, our office assistant. She’s a petite girl with mousy brown hair and some freshman fifteen still lingering in her cheeks. She sits in that familiar way everyone has at one point: arms crossed gingerly over her stomach, a subconscious attempt to hide what everyone knows is there. I’ve been watching her stare at the orange and black cookies on the conference table, decorated with Rebecca’s unborn son’s monogram: SMM (the third, obviously). The entire table is covered in other expensively decorated and on-theme processed sugar—doughnut holes with orange filling and brown sprinkles, cake pops shaped like spiders, Rice Krispies Treats topped with sugar ghosts—but Kiley’s only got eyes for the cookies.
I’m willing her to take one; be the first to open the gates of processed sugar hell. It just takes one to reach forward and grab something, then all the pregnant ladies will dive in, then everyone else will feel like they’re allowed. They’ll call it “nibbling,” the cute, pathetic way women are supposed to eat. I won’t take anything. Politely say, I’m good, thank you, when someone inevitably holds out the tray and offers. But part of me wishes I could stay late tonight, claim to be just finishing up before I leave. Then, once everyone’s gone, I’d descend upon the box of doughnuts, shoving them into my mouth two at a time, leaving a couple for the cleaning ladies as a thank-you for scrubbing down the toilet I’d immediately rush to throw up in.
“This is the fucking worst,” Lena whispers in my ear from behind, breaking me out of my obsessive stare at Kiley. “What, she couldn’t buy herself a fucking stroller? Her dad’s a vice chairman at Goldman and her husband’s on his way there. Why am I shelling out two hundred dollars so her nanny can walk her kid around SoHo comfortably?”
She speaks slowly, with the rhythm of someone you’d expect to be wielding a gold-handed cigarette holder, taking puffs in between syllables for emphasis. Everything Lena does is slow, calculated. She’s never rushed. Never caught off guard. She’s as level as a plank and nothing affects her.
“I’m waiting for someone to bring up the wedding,” I whisper back. “I think she’ll throw the stroller out the window if another person asks me what the weather’s like in Vermont this time of year.”
Lena was the only one invited to the wedding, no one else from work. One of the many benefits of having it in Vermont, at Graham’s childhood home. I didn’t want to invite her—I didn’t want to invite anyone—but my soon-to-be husband, in all his childish naivety, thought it was “bad luck” not to invite the woman who kind of introduced us.
Lena is also a director of communications (a title so meaningless, there are two of us). At thirty-two, her saddest and most admirable trait is that she still shows up to work hungover, though with perfect hair and pristine makeup. It’s really just the added glow of a one-night stand that gives her away.
We spend another ten minutes going around the room guessing the weight of Rebecca’s baby. Part of me hopes the baby is super fucking ugly, in that way you do when two really hot people get together. As if even natural selection knows a person with genes as ridiculously lucky as this has no choice but to be an asshole, so it intervenes early, gives him a pointy chin or a left-leaning dick.
When it comes to the “guess the melted candy that looks like shit in these diapers” portion of the afternoon, Lena and I graciously bail. There are enough twenty-three-year-olds in the room staring at Rebecca, equally jealous and thankful it’s not them, that we could sneak away nearly unnoticed. Rebecca was getting the attention she needed from a group of women basking in the fact that they were, for a nine-month period, hotter than her.
Lena follows me out of the conference room, past the row of empty desks, each displaying the small orange pumpkins gifted to us by Brittany and Ashleigh, and into my office in the back. She sits down on the couch as I plop into my chair behind the desk.
“So, I’ve been wondering,” she begins, “what is the weather in Vermont like this time of year?”
“Who fucking cares. That’s what tents and heat lamps are for.” I jerk the mouse on my Brit & Ash Agency mousepad until my computer awakens with a bright light. Did I mention a professional photo of our fearless leaders posing in front of the “You Better Work Bitch” sign is suggested as everyone’s computer background?
I pull a Post-it off the right corner of my computer screen and type its letters into the password box. They make us change our password every sixty days like we work for the goddamn CIA, not a PR firm that proffers for designers. After four separate occasions where I had to call Australian Chad in IT because I got locked out, I finally decided to keep it there, out in the open, where everyone, including me, could find it.
“What are you doing tonight?” I ask, expectant. “Want to come to a thing with me?”
“Depends on what kind of thing,” Lena responds.
“Drinks with the Vows writer?”
She bumps to the edge of the couch, her bony knees the only part of her legs still touching. “Oh shit, you got it?”
“They called yesterday,” I say with a shrug, as if it didn’t matter either way. “They’re sending a writer and photographer up to Vermont, so now I have to make sure there’s room for them somewhere.”
“Please.” She leans back, reaching her right hand in front of her to admire her perfectly polished nude nails. “I’m sure you’ve had a room booked for them since you sent in the application.”
She knows me well.
“Le Coucou at seven thirty?”
She nods. She’d show up anywhere I told her to.
“You have everything you need to handle the Wright pitch next week?” I ask.
“For their project in Sonoma? Yeah, Prude and Stash out there have it all under control.”
I look behind her, out my glass wall toward the conference room across the floor where the girls she’s referring to—one who couldn’t wear higher cut shirts if she tried and one whose mother really should have given her a lesson on waxing her Italian upper lip—sit and stare admiringly at our blushing mom-to-be.
“You really have to stop calling them that,” I tell her.
“I’d never say it to their faces.”
“That doesn’t make it better.”
“Doesn’t it, though?” She shrugs, apparently deciding her nails are as perfect as she expected them to be, and drops her hands into her lap, looking up at me. “We’ve got everything for all your pitches and all your press releases and all your clients. We’ve got you covered. You have nothing to worry about.”
I check in like I care, but I don’t, and Lena knows that.
“I should just quit, and you can take over all of my clients,” I threaten. “Why am I even here?”
She stands, her colorful midi-skirt falling into place around her, and begins walking out the door. “You’re about to marry a man richer than God. I have no idea why you’re here. I ask myself that every day.” She stops in the glass threshold and looks at me in a way I could only describe as fondly. “I’d love to drink on the New York Times’s dime. See you there.”
She waves me off as she makes her way to the office next door, leaving me with only my thoughts and the earsplitting sounds of adult recess happening across the way.
The only personal item I have in my office is a picture of Graham and me, in a simple silver frame. His sister-in-law, Veronica, took it when we were in Vermont for Christmas two years ago. Veronica loves photos. Especially the ones that make her high school boyfriends jealous. The ones where she’s cradling her son in their coordinating outfits. The ones where she’s drinking colorful cocktails on a rooftop with her hot and botoxed girlfriends. The ones where she’s laughing, leaning into her charming husband, Reed. The Brother.
For this photo, we were all sitting around the firepit after dinner, under blankets and heat lamps, drinking mulled wine. We were newly engaged; Veronica and Reed carried Henry’s baby monitor around like it was their only lifeline to mankind. Even though everyone knew their nanny, Rose, would be the first (and only) person to settle a sound from Henry’s crib, Veronica and Reed jumped with each coo for show. They’re such great parents. See? See!
My future mother-in-law was, again, telling the story of the night she met my future father-in-law, as she does any time she has one too many vodka martinis.
“Should we tell them about the night we met?” Graham whispered, his breath warm on my neck. I felt the heat of his hand as it moved dangerously up my leg under the blanket.
“I think... I think we save that for after we’ve made it official and there’s a document keeping them from disowning me,” I responded, struggling to get the words out as his hand continued on its path toward my zipper.
“Yeah?” He twisted his fingers around the copper circle and undid the button easily as we both stared forward. Through the fire, his parents’ faces were blurred as they began to tag-team the story, attempting to finish each other’s sentences in a way that would be endearing had they gotten any of them right. Or if they actually liked each other.
He slid his thick hand into my underwear and I moved a little farther down the couch, resting my feet on the firepit’s stone base and bending my knees so no one could see our movements under the blanket. I couldn’t say anything and risk it coming out as a series of breathless moans, so I kept my mouth shut, resting my head on Graham’s shoulder and breathing into him as his fingers moved.
That’s when Veronica appeared in front of the fire out of nowhere, phone pointed toward us like a gun, flash already on. We froze and she smiled slyly for a beat before tilting her head and saying, “You guys look so cute. Let me get a pic.” She adjusted the angle. “It’s perfect for your wedding slideshow,” she added. “Smile,” she said, and I could have sworn I saw her wink.
We looked into the camera and obeyed, my breath still catching, his fingers still in my jeans. And it became my favorite photo of us. The one on our wedding website. The one on the back of our save-the-dates. The one that looks perfect but hides our dirty little secret.
I take the frame in my hands and look closely at us one last time: his elated smile, my flushed cheeks, the light of the fire creating a natural glow around us. As I pack my things and initiate my Out of Office, I slip the frame into my purse, next to my notebook and the fraying copy of Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl I’d read at least ten times. I lift from my office chair and step behind it, tucking it neatly under the fingerprint-less glass desk, and then I look at my space: a sleeping computer, a Post-it with the password, a white pencil holder home to three black BICs. A gifted pumpkin one day away from rotting.
That’s it. The absolute bare minimum.
I wave at Lena as I walk past her office—“Seven thirty, Le Coucou.” She’s on the phone and offers me a head nod in return. I’ll be there, she mouths.
Then I stop outside the glass-walled conference room, peeking my head through the doorway to not take up too much of everyone’s attention.
“I’m headed out,” I say, watching Rebecca lose as much of the color from her face as possible when it’s covered in expensive fake tan, as all the girls turn toward me.
“Congratulations!” They all start cheering, bringing their hands to their hearts, as if my joy is their joy.
“Send us pictures!” someone in the front yells, I can’t see who.
“Can’t wait to hear all about it!” Kiley exclaims, her lips stained slightly black from the icing on the cookie she’s scarfed down since I last saw her.
I smile around the room, meeting a few people’s eyes, and finally land on Rebecca, front and center, now with jeans covered in blue bows. “Congrats, Bec. Can’t wait to meet the little dude. Sorry I have to bail early.”
She takes a deep breath and smiles so slowly it’s as if each centimeter of emotion is exhausting for her to muster. “I’m so happy for you,” she says back, cradling her belly with her left hand. Her engagement ring is nowhere near as impressive as mine. There’s at least a carat’s difference. Maybe one and a half.
“See you Monday!” they echo as I walk away, leaving the office, and my desk, as empty as it was when I arrived nearly five years ago.
I don’t respond. They’ll figure it out eventually.