Pink Slip Party - Brossura

Cara Lockwood was born in Dallas, Texas, and earned a bachelor's degree in English from the University of Pennylvania in 1995. She has worked as a journalist in Austin, and is now married and living in Chicago, where she pines for sunshine and Tex Mex. Her first novel, I Do (But I Don't), is also available from Downtown Press.

Chapter 1

I think if someone fires you, they should have the decency to do it in person. My boss, lower than vermin on the food chain, was too chicken to actually tell me. Instead, I found out via email.

It's not like I would have wanted a show of tears and prostrated apologies (although these would have been nice). I just wanted a minimum level of decency. Personally, I'd prefer a twenty-one-gun salute, but that's just me. My dad always says I have an over-inflated sense of my place in the world.

Three days ago, on the day after Valentine's Day, I was part of a massive layoff of 1,000 employees from my company (an office supplier that manufactures pink slips). The irony here is not lost on me. Technically, we print office supplies -- your blue phone-message pads, your Post-it notes. I worked in design and development on such riveting projects as redesigning "While You Were Out" notes and writing instructions for the backs of correction fluid jars.

On my last day of work, my boss (is it wrong that I wake up and hope daily he's reincarnated one day as toe fungus?), a bald, corpulent, smelly man with a shiny, greasy-streaked ring of hair around his ears and down the back of his neck, blinked his black, beady eyes at me and said, "Your severance package would be greater, but you've used up all your sick days."

I suppose I should have been glad. Some people got laid off via voicemail. And others got the news scrolling across the screens on their Blackberry pagers.

The worst thing about being laid off is that it completely nixes your dream of storming into your boss's office, telling him what he can do with his status reports, and quitting to internal audience applause.

"Does Mike know about this?" I asked my boss. Mike Orephus was the vice president of the Midwest Division, and just happened to be the same man I'd been dating for seven months.

"He knows," my boss said. "He's the one who signed your pink slip."

The pink slip wasn't actually pink at all. It wasn't even a slip. It was just a regular piece of paper, white, with large even margins and a form filled out in Helvetica font, point size 12.

"Listen, we both know this isn't working out," Mike said, when I went into his office that same day. He couldn't look me in the eye. He fixed his gaze on the framed picture of his chocolate Lab, Buddy, sitting on his desk. I didn't know whether he meant my job performance or our relationship or both.

"You're firing me and breaking up with me?" I squeaked. I thought he'd show me a little pity. I didn't take him for the type who'd run me down with his car, and then throw it into reverse for good measure.

"Jane, come on, you know that the layoffs are not my decision. They come from above me." He sighed. "And, you had to see that our little fling was over. I mean, I didn't call you for almost a week. You had to see this coming."

I'd believed it when he told me he couldn't talk, that he was swamped at work.

"I thought you were just busy," I said.

"Don't be ridiculous," he said. He used that annoyed snappish tone. The one that all men use when they're breaking up with you and feel bad about doing it, so they try to make it somehow all your fault.

"But, I thought..." Now would not be a good time to tell him I'd been thinking we were headed somewhere. That I'd been secretly flipping through Martha Stewart Weddings magazines on the newsstands -- not because I expected us to get married, but when you reach seven months, anything could happen. "I thought you loved me," I finished.

Mike just shook his head at me, looking annoyed.

"Are you going to cry?" he asked me, squinting.

I didn't cry. I'm not a crier. I've never cried in a movie theater, not even when I saw the Joy Luck Club. My ex-boyfriend Ron says I've got a heart of granite, but he was a geology major, so who knows what he really meant. There are events that make me teary -- plucking my eyebrows and looking at my MasterCard bill are two that come to mind. I'm just not overly sentimental. I worked for two years designing Post-its and while-you-were-out notes. It's hardly the sort of work that encourages romantic dreams.

Besides, I've lost better jobs and boyfriends. At least, I think I have.

I've been laid off three times now, and I'm only twenty-eight. My dad always tells me that I should be sure to make a niche for myself in the market. "You see a need, you fill it," is what he would say.

I've made a career out of being disposable. I'm always the first one to go.

When I told my mother about the layoff, she told me, "Well, dear, look on the bright side. This will give you more time to date."

I'm skinny, but don't hate me. You try going through grade school being called a skeleton. It's not at all fun. Sure, now I'm reaping the benefits, now that I'm an adult and still sometimes dream of a bully named Sheila who would body-slam me into the jungle gym bars and call me Toothpick. As far as I'm concerned, I deserve to be able to fit into boy jeans.

Besides, the downside of being skinny is that I have no boobs. I should invest in Miracle Bras, but I think that would just be false advertising. There are men who have more cleavage than I do.

I've got honey blond hair, but not naturally so, which I usually keep up at the nape of my neck in a messy knot. When I'm lounging around the house, I wear glasses, which are thick and boxy and I think they make me look like Lisa Loeb, but my friend Steph says I look more like Elvis Costello.

I am not normally what you'd call a go-getter. But, I did try hard at Maximum Office. More than tried, really put forth an effort, my best work. I wanted to impress Mike, naturally. Mike, the youngest VP in the company at age thirty-five. Mike who looked thirty, who would listen to my ideas in department meetings and congratulate me on them, like a doting professor. I worked fifty hours a week almost every week. Now, I see that as time wasted. Hours I could've spent happily watching The E! True Hollywood Story.

Here's my life in a nutshell:

I'm unemployed. I am currently living in a gigantic, two-bedroom apartment that I can't afford. And instead of saving three months' salary, like every fiscally responsible person should in these uncertain economic times of two weeks' severance pay, I blow three months' salary repeatedly and often and carry roughly that and then some spread out over three credit cards. You could say I'm financially dyslexic.

My mother wishes I'd date more.

My dad feels like I should get married and have babies and stop trying to prove I can handle a career.

I made the colossal mistake of sleeping with an executive who dumped me and was kind enough to spare me the awkward run-ins at the water cooler by firing me.

There. You now have the vital statistics. My life isn't so bad, really. The one perk about being unemployed is that you have the perfect reason to lie around in your flannel pajamas and sulk. It's nice to have a real reason to mope. It's nice to be able to frown at family gatherings and have people whisper: "The job market is getting to her, poor thing," instead of "She's twenty-eight and single, poor thing." At a cousin's couples shower yesterday, my aunt and uncle stuck a couple of $100 bills in my purse. Personally, I'm not above pity as long as it takes the form of cash.

"Tell me what Star Jones is wearing," says my good friend Steph, calling as she does every day around ten. Steph works at Maximum Office and was spared during the last round of layoffs. This does not make her happy, as she's never been laid off, and she feels like she's missing out. Not to mention, now that she's a layoff survivor, she has to do the work of the five other people they let go in the public relations department.

"Let me just say that probably fifty polyester stuffed leopards had to die for her outfit," I answer.

"Has she started shouting yet?" Steph asks me.

"Not yet," I say. I have an irrational dislike of Star Jones and everyone on The View. When I had a job, I liked The View. It was a guilty pleasure to watch when I called in sick. Now that daytime television is my only intellectual stimulus and social outlet of the day, I find I have no patience.

I wonder why they have jobs and I don't. I could shout. And be opinionated on subjects I know nothing about. And badger celebrities with dumb questions. Watching daytime television always sinks my morale, but I simply can't help it. It's one of those self-destructive desires like craving cheese fries or nicotine.

"Be glad you aren't here," Steph breathes to me.

"What's happening? Has anyone quit?" I ask, hopeful. I like to imagine that after I was laid off, hundreds of other workers took to the parking lot with lighted torches, flipping executives' cars and demanding their fellow coworkers be reinstated.

"God, no," Steph says. "Everyone's scared shitless. Plus, there's no time to quit, not with the work we have to do. Did I tell you I have to write marketing proposals for eight new clients? And that's just what I'm supposed to do today. I haven't left the office before nine anytime this week."

"That does sound rotten," I say.

"Worse, Mike's been talking about having a weekend retreat," Steph says. "As if we aren't giving enough blood to the company, they want our Saturdays and Sundays, too."

"Well, it could be worse. You could be held captive in front of The View like I am," I say.

"Considering I have a stack of work on my desk taller than the Sears Tower, that doesn't sound so bad," Steph says. "Shit, here comes the boss. I think he's going to tell me I have to stay late again tonight. Let me call you back later."

Two minutes after I put the phone down, it rings again. It's my brother Todd.

"Jane, you promised you'd look for jobs today," he says. He's older and put together and doesn't like the idea of his tax dollars supporting my extended hiatus. He can't stand the idea of anyone not being a slave to the same institutions he is. He can't bear the thought of someone else living a free life outside the box.

"I am looking," I lie. The classifieds are open and they're sitting on the other end of the couch. If I stretch my neck to the right and squint hard enough I could probably make out one or two of them.

"If you were really looking, you'd be online, and the phone line would be busy. Have you at least made a plan?"

Todd feels planning is essential. Like showering. His idea of spontaneity is to use free hand calculations instead of an Excel spreadsheet.

"I was thinking of checking out the profession of dereliction," I say. "I'm more than qualified for it."

"Jane. Be serious."

"I am serious. I'm not a picky eater. I could eat out of trash cans."

"I hardly think that counts as a valuable skill," he says.

"Maybe I could test out new Nabisco products," I say.

"Have you sent out your resume?" Todd is nothing if not relentless. I know that this is just his way of showing he cares.

"I've sent out twenty resumes, and I got one call-back from a man who informed me the fax number I was dialing was out of service," I say.

"Well, maybe we should update your resume," Todd says.

"Todd -- don't you have tax returns to do?"

"Look, I don't mean to be an asshole, I'm just saying, you should think about what you're going to do next," he says. "You should take this time to re-evaluate your life goals."

It's hard to re-evaluate your life goals when you've just lost a job you didn't even much like. It's hard to plan for your future when you are beginning to suspect that everything you touch turns to crap. I don't exactly have the confidence at the moment to engineer my next brilliant career move, since my Fall-in-Love-With-an-Executive plan didn't work out.

Todd is still talking.

"You should take this opportunity to really ask yourself: What do I want to be?"

"Todd, have you been reading Who Moved My Cheese again?"

When I was in college, I had dreams of becoming the next Andy Warhol, except that after three art classes I discovered that my talent landed somewhere between Walt Disney and Sherman Williams. Not to mention, when you graduate as an art major, you don't, as popularly believed, get a gallery showing handed to you along with a big fat check from the National Endowment for the Arts.

"Have you at least gone down to the unemployment office?" Todd asks me.

"I thought you didn't believe in government handouts," I say.

"Well, you've more than paid for it in taxes. If you don't go apply, then you're letting Uncle Sam steal more of what's rightfully yours."

"I'll go, Todd," I say.

"When?"

"Today, all right?"

"That's my girl," he says and hangs up. Todd and I have your typical older brother/younger sister sibling relationship: He tells me what to do and I largely ignore him.

Because I'd rather do almost anything than change out of my pajamas, I sit down at my computer and scroll through job listings for awhile. There are no new creative or graphic design positions posted. They are the same five that have been listed for the last week. Three of these are from now-defunct dot-coms (having tried emailing them, I know) and two are at companies currently going through a hiring freeze (it is cheaper to leave a posting online than to take it down).

Since there are no jobs posted that I'm qualified for, I apply for a few I'm not, including Zoo Assistant. I make up a wild story in my cover letter about my fictitious exploits in India, where I grew up and learned how to train elephants by watching Biki, our family's servant, care for the animals.

I like to think that somewhere, there is a human resources employee with a sense of humor. I have faith that one must exist. Like life on other planets.

While I am already in a foul mood, I decide now is as good a time as any to go to the unemployment office. I have been putting off this activity for too long. I do not want to admit to the state that I have, indeed, lost another job. It feels like admitting to your friends that the boyfriend you told them was planning to propose has run off with your downstairs neighbor. Dumped. Again.

The unemployment office is a dingy horrible place with army posters on the walls and horrifically artificial fluorescent lighting. All state buildings, I think, are required to have very unflattering lighting. It's part of an elaborate plot to make state employees look even more disheveled and bored.

When I arrive, around two in the afternoon, there is already a line of degenerates behind a coiled rope, much like a ride at Disney World, except there's no sunshine and no overpriced soda stands. I am tempted, however, to raise up my arms and shout, as if I am sitting in the front car of a roller coaster. Ahead of me, there's a woman in a business suit who looks like she only just got fired today (she's clinging desperately to a potted plant). Ahead of her is a man with a full beard who has drawn swastikas on his shirt. At the very front, I can hear two unemployment office employees arguing.

"That's not my job, Lucinda," one of them is shouting. "Why don't you stop being so damn lazy."

"Mmm-hmmm, I know you didn't just talk to me like that, biatch."

"Who are you calling a bitch?"

"Well, you's the only one here, so I guess I be talking to you. Biatch."

"You want to go right now? Let's go."

"Oh, I'm ready to. Anytime you wanna go. I'm ready."

So...