Jeneration X: One Reluctant Adult's Attempt to Unarrest Her Arrested Development; Or, Why It's Never Too Late for Her Dumb Ass to Learn Why Froot Loops Are Not for Dinner (10 page)

Ultimately, I was successful in being hired on my own merits.

Turns out, even though I got the job, I
hated
the job. For six months, my professional life revolved around keeping the physician provider manual up-to-date and my days were endless, filled with calling office staffs to inquire if they were located on Sheridan Street or Sheridan Road. It was crazy-making and I wonder if I wouldn’t have been happier as a waitress. At least I’d get a shift drink at the end of the day.

Around that time, my friend’s mom landed an incredible gig at a top-tier consulting firm and it was everything everyone in my company dreamed about. I’m talking serious Golden Ticket here. As I watched her pack her desk, all I could say was, “Take me with you!”

To which she replied simply, “You’re not ready. You need to serve your time here before you can move on.”

As I’ve built my career, first as an executive, and then as an author, I’ve never forgotten that piece of advice.

I don’t know what it’s like to be searching for a job now right out of college. In a lot of ways, because of access to information, it has to be easier than trawling around a basement, squinting at microfiche. And yet, because technology’s leveled the playing field, it must be challenging as well, so I respect anyone who takes a creative approach in trying to make it. When it’s appropriate and when I can, I do my best to help those who ask.

What I don’t respect is the portion of Generation Y—and to be clear, I believe it’s only a portion and that there are plenty who shouldn’t be painted with this brush—who’ve grown so lazy and entitled that they can’t even be bothered to try.

That brings me to Ashley.

Ashley embodies everything I loathe about the Millennials. Following, you’ll find the letter she blast-e-mailed to a number of successful contemporary authors [
Including me.
] a couple of years ago. (My comments are in italics.)

FYI, I didn’t send this to her, tempting though it was.

Instead, I exercised a heroic amount of self-restraint and demonstrated maturity by e-mailing this reply:

“Ashley, this is not how you become a writer.”

The great irony here is that Ashley had the nerve to tell me that I was out of line, like
I’m
the one at fault because she lacked the willingness or intellectual curiosity to make any effort to become a writer outside of finding my e-mail address… like
I
should ignore my current deadlines in order to share my hard-won knowledge of the publishing world with someone who hasn’t even bothered to read one of my books.

Frankly, I’m shocked to have heard back from her and not one of her helicopter parents who’ve clearly been good-jobbing her to
the point where she feels like the world not only revolves around her, but also owes her the benefit of its collective experience.

So, Ashley, please understand there are plenty of Millennials out there who don’t share your nonexistent work ethic.

They recognize that technology is only part of the equation and it’s to be used in addition to, and not in lieu of, making an effort.

And they’re going to eat you alive.

“E
xcuse me, ma’am?”

I’m sitting at my desk, deep in concentration, trying to make sense of what to pack and what to pitch.

These drawers are shameful. I don’t know how I can be so organized in some aspects of my life and so utterly disordered in others. Every contract I’ve ever signed, sorted by dates and dollar amounts, lives in a tidy bundle in the bottom file drawer. They’re next to folders for all bills we’ve paid in the last three years, chronologically ordered, time-stamped with check numbers and, if paid online, attached to confirmation receipts.

Yet one drawer up from that is an office supply graveyard, brimming with dead pens and old stamps and expired prescriptions. I’m talking business cards from people I can’t recall meeting and Post-it notes covered in random sums, surrounded by expired gift cards and rusty paper clips and the world’s oldest pack of gum,
all shellacked into one giant mass by an oozing bottle of clear nail polish.

Pathetic.

I’m not a pack rat—really, I’m not, although sometimes in an effort to be more efficient, I trend that way. For example, my office is on the second floor and that’s where I tend to spend most of the workday. Because it’s located an entire flight of stairs away from the filtered water on the fridge door, I find myself going thirsty rather than taking the trek to the kitchen.

(Yes, I understand exactly how lazy this is.)

(Do I need to remind anyone of how I once considered hiding a bucket in the first floor pantry of our old town house rather than climbing twelve stairs to the bathroom?)

(Fletch wouldn’t let me, by the way, which is bullshit because I have a pretty good idea of what went down in the mop sink when Fletch would drink beer in his basement man cave.)

Anyway, I came up with a rather elegant solution. I’d buy a case of water and store it upstairs. Ergo I’d never get thirsty to the point of dizziness again. Genius! [
A tiny bit pathetic, but mostly genius!
]

I bought the water, brought it upstairs, and deposited it on the guest bathroom counter where it was profoundly in the way for the next few days. Although I shower in the master bathroom down the hall, I do everything else in here. Fletch is a bona fide bathroom hog and there’s nothing more annoying than having to stay up an extra half hour waiting to floss while he’s busy reading
War and Peace
on the mug. [
If anyone out there shares a bathroom with her husband, I implore you to either move to a larger space or add on to your existing space because this is the key to marital bliss.
]

The problem with my genius solution is that I had to work around the bulky case when I brushed my teeth, washed my face, conducted whisker patrol, [
Shut up.
] etc., so I needed to find a place to store it. I thought the laundry room might work, but it was so tiny that I’d have to rearrange everything in the cabinets and that smacked of the exact type of effort I hoped to avoid.

Turns out the solution to my problem was right next to me. I drew back the shower curtain in front of the unused guest tub and placed the case in there, spic, span, and out of the way. Added bonus? If one of the bottles started to leak, the water would go right down the drain. Again, genius!

When Fletch arrived home, I proudly whipped open the curtain to show him where I’d stashed the water.

He slowly looked from the case to me. After a long pause, he finally responded, “You’ve decided to store items in an empty tub. Congratulations. You’ve just taken the first step to seeing yourself on
Hoarders
in twenty years.”

I moved the bottles. I’d rather be thirsty than on TV for the wrong reasons.

I’m so lost in thoughts about accidentally becoming one of those cat-flattening hoarders [
There’s always at least one flat cat on those shows. Always.
] that the woman in the doorway has to clear her throat to grab my attention.

“Oh, gosh, I’m sorry. What can I do for you?” This lady is part of the team busy packing up our house for the move. We thought we could do it all ourselves but we quickly became so bogged down in the decision-making process that we fell behind schedule and had to call in experts.

The packer appears somewhat perplexed, which is odd. Thus far she’s known how to pack everything from CD collections to a free-range assortment of Christmas ornaments. Fletch and I have been awed for the past day as she and her crew systematically disassemble every bit of our house, so I wonder what could have possibly thrown her off her game.

“Ma’am, what would you like for me to do with… your head?”

She holds up my blond, bodiless Barbie styling head, ordered one night years ago while on an Ambien trip. I’ve since learned that I can’t be trusted to be near a computer while on prescription sleeping medication, so I made sure to move my computer as far away from my bed as possible. (In fact, in the new house, my office will live on an entirely different floor.)