meh/style
Adelle Waldman,
Sarah Rose Etter,
Lydia Kiesling,
Tahmima Anam,
Ellen Pao,
Jenny Zhang,
Carrie Sun,
Claire Stanford,
Gabriela Garcia
We entered a vast windowless space, seemingly a ballroom, though who would want to host a ball in this windowless space was a mystery. The room was filled with hundreds of booths, each with a table and a sign, a salesperson or two shilling product that was at least tangentially related to happiness. A guard at the door checked our badges; only conference attendees were allowed in.
so blah. the last sentence especially feels clunky
But Nicole couldn’t explain, not even to Ruby, who was her closest friend at the store. (Never mind that Ruby was forty-eight, the same age as Nicole’s mom, and of a different race. Who cared? Nicole’s fiancé Marcus was black too.) Still, if she told Ruby how happy leaving Meredith hanging had made her, she’d sound like she needed to get a life.
are you KIDDING
“It’s not that,” said Milo irritably. (Jokes by people other than himself tended to grate on his nerves.) “Meredith ignores me, and I’m as white as can be.” He held up his arm, as if the others might not have noticed his skin color before now. “She doesn’t even say hello to me. It’s as if I’m not even a person to her, as if the truck just throws itself.”
At this, Milo laughed.
my god
She might once have had other aspirations, but her life had taken a decisive turn when she was seventeen. She had run away from home. For a while, she’d lived in her car. Even after she’d gotten on her feet—found a job, a place to live—she had struggled. For years, she had been both depressed and wild, self-destructive. It wasn’t until Val met Liz in her mid-twenties that everything changed. In the past five years, Val had gotten married, gotten her GED, had a baby. She’d reconciled with her grandmother—now she and Liz took care of her and lived in her house. Val even saw her mom sometimes—without her dad’s knowledge. He was the reason she’d left home in the first place. He was the kind of person who’d get drunk with his buddies and go out to the coop and shoot his own chickens. For fun. He also didn’t like gay people.
blargh
After she’d left Town Square yesterday, she had spent hours thinking about the group manager job. If she got it, she’d be able to pay her back bills—she still owed for heat last winter, among other things. She’d also be able to buy for her son, so he’d be provided for when he got out of prison, ready to make a fresh start, train for a career like he should have done years ago (he was smart, perhaps the smartest of her three kids).
oh my god
Corporate wasn’t playing when it came to unions. The year before, someone in Harvest—the team responsible for fresh produce and perishables—was fired for “time theft” after he’d been spotted talking briefly to a union organizer during his shift.
i can't even explain why but this annoys me. it just feels too pat or something
It wasn’t like there was any rush, no matter what her mom said. As Nicole had tried to explain to the union organizer who’d cornered her outside the store a few months ago—after her shift was over or she’d never have risked talking to him!—Town Square wasn’t so bad. It was a lot better than the job Nicole had before, in fast food. Her boss was a dirtbag who hit on her all the time, promising to promote her to assistant manager if she’d sleep with him. It was gross—and more than a little bit scary when she was alone with him. One thing about Town Square was that it didn’t tolerate that kind of shit. (Nicole appreciated Big Will’s thing about keeping his office door open—it set the right tone.) Really, the worst thing about this job was Meredith, her micromanaging, the constant threat of being written up, her whole irritating energy, the way she ruined their goddamn fucking chill.
boring
He was bothered by what she’d said the other night about his still being hung up on Steph, his ex. It complicated the narrative he wanted to hold on to: that he was the aggrieved party and she was wholly at fault. But he knew there was truth in what Cristina said, although Raymond would probably say what he wasn’t over was the idea he’d long had of Steph, and about him and Steph as a couple and the life they were going to have together.
god this is just so FLAT
“I hear what you’re saying,” she said. “I do. But there’s just one problem. All these boxes are going to get broken out by Monday anyway. Remember? What’s the point of organizing them right before we break them out. It’s like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic when the boat is about to sink.” She giggled at her own analogy. It was a mean giggle, the laugh of a popular girl after fake-complimenting an unpopular one.
?????
Val was the type who’d have a hard time accepting that when you’re a low- or even a mid-level manager at a large corporation like Town Square, you have to be flexible. Ordinarily that might be enough to tilt the scale toward Diego, but there were things that made Val an especially attractive candidate. Group manager of Movement was usually a guy. That Val was a woman was good, especially because this wouldn’t be the kind of thing where she was getting the job because she was a woman, the way Meredith putting in for Logistics was kind of cute because it was so unexpected, given Meredith’s girly, fashionista vibe. Val was far more suited to Movement than she was to more traditionally feminine areas of the store, like Customer Experience.
painful