pump and dump

12Oct07

Part of the reason why I do this shit right when I should be going to bed is because life as a parent is mostly devoid of the usual diversions that one would call FUN.

Why anyone reading this would give a shit about my day is beyond me, so please go away if you don’t want to read about some bitchy, money grubbing new yorker try to find her good mood by letting out her nasty true self down below. I can tell you, it won’t be pretty.

About my work day, about being summoned to the Boss’s office to defend a project that’s seriously over fee, about me having nothing to do with a very pregnant woman getting fired via email because this fucking project, which I was brought in to “save” on the design side is hemorraghing money. This is the kind of stuff that I’m trying not to think about and is keeping me up on the computer writing aimlessly.

While Max is in daycare, hopefully not breaking 102 with his fever again, and breaking out in that fucking rash again, I’m in the office, dragging stone samples, glass tile, fabric made of ‘crypton’ made to look like silk to The Boss’s office. I have a lot of bosses. It’s a big company. But this Boss is the Big Boss. She scares the FUCK out of me.

I had an email tip in the morning before I left the house that there was some “concern” about the fee. My project manager is always knee deep in shit because of someone not paying us. This time though, it sounded like his eyelashes were in danger. Rising levels of attention mostly induce panic and his emailed request to craft a statement about the current status of the design, immediately, made me bag the jeans and flip flops I was planning on wearing. My espn kicked in nice and good.

Black wrap dress and heels, the mister and max looked at me like I had a booger on my face.

I can’t be late today. BYE! No time for explaining.

The Big Boss doesn’t like casual dress, she scowls at my feet in the bathroom, in the corridor, before she might look up at my face and make eye contact. I rarely have my girly shoes on at the right time even though they’re lined up like soldiers in my drawer. A whole secret army that my husband never sees, resides in my one of my file cabinets at work, but has failed to emerge as of late due to laziness on my part. I used to change from sneakers to heels diligently each morning. There’s a dress code. But like the old drunk who foregos the vermouth in his martini by waving the bottle near his vodka or gin, or simply makes visual contact with the bottle while holding his unadulaterated cone of clear Alcohol from across the room, I glance at my drawer of shoes and feel that false sense of security of knowing that I’ll probably be within running distance to do a sneaky quick change if necessary.

Is my hair fly away? Visible panty line? Double check the shoes. Gawd. No. Back to the arsenal, this color won’t work. What is that sound? Jesus, it’s me panting. I’m not that easy to spook, but the Big Boss will do that to me.

I gathered my team for the internal presentation, the one I thought might happen before I left the house. Trust your gut. So what are you so nervous about? My gut also told me I had nothing to worry about. I didn’t fuck up. I’m not the reason that poor pregnant chick was canned.

We showed up in the executive suite armed with materials and drawings, and she looked at me like I was bug. Her assistant looked at us in surprise.

Oh, she’s in a meeting.

Thank god. We were to be re-summoned later. Exactly when I needed to run home to be with my feverish son.

Trudging back to our desks, I passed the new executive bathroom. I thought of the old exec restroom I used while I was nursing and pumping at work. Rumors of the Big Boss’s personal bathroom turned out to be true, a single clean toilet room with a single dry vanity and no disgusting wet paper towels all over the floor and counter that had to be cleaned up and wiped down every time I went into the handicap restroom that all the men used because it was closer to their desks. I started using her “personal” restroom to pump even though I never made myself believe the BS coming out of my mouth about how I didn’t care if she found out, because being a mother made you recognize what’s really important like the health of your child and breast milk and a clean environment to extract that milk.

The day I had my little come-to-jesus recognition about how much I’d been lying to myself was the day that I got home, unzipped my backpack pump case, numbly reached into the insulated pack that held my expressed milk bottles, and felt one lonely, feather light plastic container full of the horrifying fact that I had left three full bottles of blue milk on the top ledge of the dry vanity in my Big Boss’s bathroom.

In my head, I could still see them lined up, proof of what a good producer I was. I had put them even higher up off the counter top where executives styled their hair and maybe sprinkled some powder on the counter from tickling their blush. Smart of me. Because I’m a good mom like that.

They must have been warm still as I abandoned them. All the wrapping of the power cord, the zipping of the zippers, the coiling of the tubes, distracted me from noticing them staring me in the face, almost at eye level, as I may have looked in the mirror at my haggard face and then turned around to walk back to my desk.

In my own bathroom that night, I held an empty plastic tube in one hand and my forehead in the other.

FUCK

The Big Boss must have walked in, looked at Max’s supply for a day with narrowed eyes, and then, getting closer, recoiled in shock and maybe disgust.

After staring at my empty backpack for eternity, I looked up at my reflection in the mirror and forced myself to laugh. It wasn’t that hard. It was fucking hilarious. I may have cried a little bit because of the wasted effort, but the next day when I got to work, I ran to the executive restroom and half-expected the bottles to be there still. I opened the door and laughed again at my weird hope that I could have rescued the unusable milk.

5:00 on the dot. We’re called back to the Big Boss’s office. She still has her own bathroom, but it’s called the client restroom now. Our new digs are fine, but I’m glad I don’t have to brave the fancy new toilet room with the fancy new mandate that “only clients are allowed to use the client bathroom”. I wondered if my blue beauties had anything to do with that memo.

The mister picked up Max as I sat there with a clear voice and a shaky stomach presenting a project to the Big Boss and explaining where we were in the process, how much there was left to do. (how does one fire a really really pregnant woman?) I started shivering but managed to finish the show and convince her that we needed the extra time, all the people, to produce a product worthy of this firm’s reputation.

blah blah blah

It was a good, bracing jolt into an awareness of my real circumstances at my job. Nothing’s for sure. Anything could happen. I’ve been getting too comfortable, avoiding any real self-evaluation about this. Can I work here? For these people who email and voicemail their firings to sweet big-bellied pregnant women?

Too much to think about, not enough sleep.

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