32. The Grass is Always Greener in the Tower Across the Street…
32
The Grass is Always Greener in the Tower Across the Street…
Paige - Two Days Later
The past few days have been some of the craziest of my life. I mean, not like plane-crash crazy. More like a massive upheaval in my life’s plan. After I filled a box with my personal items and walked out the door of Prescott Marketing and Ad Solutions forever, I quickly looked up the phone number for Gamble Air on Santa Valentina island, overcome by an urge to tell Mac that I did it. That I took his advice and used the two little words that brought me to where I am right now— unemployed.
But not unemployed in that terrifying, hopeless way that sometimes happens to people. Unemployed in the terrifying, ‘the-sky’s-the-limit, you go girl’ way. Only as soon as I pressed the call send button, I immediately panicked and hung up, wondering if he might freak out, thinking that I want to move down there and get married and start having children immediately. The truth is, I do want all those things, but just because I quit my job doesn't mean I'm going to get them. After all, nothing has changed on his end. At least, not that I'm aware of.
So instead of being brave for the second time that morning, I lugged my personal effects to the subway station and went home. Vivian and I had a brief celebration including some sticky buns that I picked up at the bakery on the main floor of our apartment building. I was halfway through my third one (yeah, that’s right—I ate three of those bitches because after six years working for a psycho, I deserved every morsel of that sweet, sticky goodness). Anyway, I was still eating when my phone rang.
Vivian grinned at my phone. "Ten bucks says that’s Guy begging you to come back."
"Well Guy can suck it," I said, picking up my phone. But it wasn't Guy. It was Monica Rubinsky of 2M Marketing and Advertising Consultants. If there's one thing ad people know how to do, it’s spread the word quickly, which means possibly by the time I was walking down the stairs to the subway, half of New York's ad executives already knew I quit.
And this brings us to today, where I am currently being interviewed by Monica and Marcel — the 2 M’s themselves…
"So, listen, Paige, this whole thing is just a formality. You’ve basically got the job already," Marcel says, lifting the carafe on the middle of the conference room table and topping up his coffee. Then he does something Guy would never do—he gestures with the pot toward me as if to ask if I would like a refill.
"No, thank you," I say. "I'm feeling jittery enough."
They both give me a courtesy laugh, then Monica (who is clearly in charge) takes over the meeting. "As I said on the phone, Marcel and I are thrilled that you have suddenly become available. Someone with your talent and skills… I mean, honestly, the Vialis campaign? Genius. And that whole heart attack thing, as unfortunate as it was, is no reflection on you."
"We've seen the footage of the island. That was some out-of-the-box thinking you did to get yourselves rescued. We could use somebody with the type of untapped creativity that you possess," Marcel says, taking a sip of his coffee.
Monica nods in agreement, then says, "And we know you're a perfect fit for the culture here at 2M because you're used to working long hours?—"
"—Although the hours we work are not nearly what you were doing at Prescott," Marcel says. "We’d never, ever ask an employee to miss her sister’s wedding.”
“That’s a relief,” I answer, even though, honestly, isn’t that just the bare minimum?
“I’m sure it would be. We also take weekends off here," he says as though it's a point of pride.
"Although we do work the occasional Sunday," Monica says. "We have a lot of clients in Asia and that's their Monday, so we kind of have to."
"You gotta be available to the clients," Marcel says. "But you know all about that already."
Nodding, I say, "I do."
The next fifteen minutes are spent with the pair of them explaining to me what a junior ad executive position entails at their firm, and going over vacation time (two weeks per year to start), salary, the commission structure, and expectations of employees. I listen and jot down a few notes for myself, the entire time feeling a sense of dread building inside of me, even though they're saying everything I’ve always wanted to hear. There is ample opportunity for advancement here, the starting salary blows mine out of the water, and they're willing to allow for time off during working hours for me to complete my degree. My sense of logic and responsibility is screaming at me to say yes and take the job. But my gut is telling me no. Actually, it’s probably my lady bits shouting no because they still believe there's a chance I could wind up back in the Caribbean with Mac.
"So, that's our pitch," Monica says, smiling at me. "We'd love it if you could start as early as this afternoon so that we can get the orientation and HR stuff out of the way today. We have a new client coming in first thing tomorrow morning and we’d love you to be a part of that campaign. Start you off with a bang."
Leaning in, Marcel lowers his voice. "We can't say exactly who the client is until you sign the NDA, but let's just say if you could find an overweight country singer who’s willing to inject himself with a new weight loss drug, that would be enormously helpful for us."
Take the job. Just take the job—you need the money, neither of them seems like an obvious malignant narcissist, and … it’s a lot of money. This is your dream, being handed to you on a silver platter. Just say yes. "Can I take a night to sleep on it?"