Is It The End Of Dream Jobs?

“Do you want this job?” my boss Cyan, wearing thick black glasses that make her look like a cross between Jenna Lyons and the Tootsie Pop owl, asks. A nervous-looking HR rep sits to her left. Cyan’s merlot-colored Birkin sits between them. “We noticed you let flowers from the general manager die on your desk.” I’m lost. “Was I supposed to resuscitate them?” I ask. “See?” Cyan looks at the HR rep. “This is the attitude I’m talking about.” She turns back to me. “We want someone who wants this job. Someone who will be a good corporate citizen.” Ew. A what? And with that, I’m given two weeks. I pick up my laptop, smile at the HR rep who’s fully dissociated by this point and sulk back to my cubicle.

What I initially thought would be a dream job, working for all the ~cool girl~ (rich, white, cis, skinny, straight) magazines, turned out to be a lot of underpaid, overworked women in their 20s competing for promotions that didn’t exist. Screaming at each other about celebrities’ “What’s In My Bag?” videos (usually just a phone and some gum), and who wore what cummerbun to the Met Gala. I once sobbed to my therapist for an hour over a Khloé Kardashian interview I’d accidentally published early. I’d spent months trying to learn how to contour only to look like an AI-aged photo of a cast member of Toddlers & Tiaras. I didn’t belong in this world. But I needed to be violently and unceremoniously ejected from it in order to see that.