With barely a minute to spare, I slid into my cubicle chair at 8:30am exactly. My hair was still wet from my quick shower and as usual I wasn’t exactly happy with my chosen outfit for the day. I promised myself I’d do better tomorrow. Tomorrow I would get up early, run a six minute mile with Jen, shower, apply every beauty product in my cabinet expertly and descend from my clean apartment perfectly clad in my office attire. Tomorrow.
For the remainder of the morning it was work as usual, with frequent coffee breaks and trips to the bathroom to pass the time. I really do appreciate my job, I really do. My cousin got me the entry level job at the advertising firm as a favor to my mom. Since that day about 2 years ago, I’ve been plugging away at the office trying to accomplish whatever it is that we do here. Recently I sat in on a pivotal meeting in which the background color of an advertisement was discussed. Should we use use mint green or sea foam green? What does each color say to our target audience. All I could think was, “are you kidding me with this?!” I thought they were kidding until we started a conference call with our sister office in Toronto. I guess I have a lot to learn about the world of advertising.
Of course, I never set out to be a girl in a cubicle. College was a great experience for me. So great in fact, that I stayed for a extra year much to my parents dismay. I walked away with a degree in finance that I am pretty darn proud of. After a few temp jobs, I decided to move from Peoria the windy city to pursue a dream job and settled for the ad firm. I can’t say I don’t enjoy working downtown, although I always feel like a stranger in a strange land.
At lunch, I had to go out to forage for food since I rarely remembered to pack a lunch. In my quest for something semi-healthy I ran in to Jen and her cubicle neighbor Tonya on the way to the elevator. Tonya was a sweet, rather timid red-head that reminded me of a scared bunny. She rarely seemed to do anything without Jen’s approval and today proved no exception.
“Jen was telling me about this great Thai place in the food court that has low carbs meals, it’s that perfect?” Tonya rattled. Great, another days of quasi starvation.

The names have been changed....

It’s always senior year English class, possibly the most wretched of all the high school curricula, especially for someone as verbally inept as myself. Wait, I thought I passed this class, albeit with a C. In fact, I’m pretty sure I graduated from high school. But here I am in row 3, right behind Tommy Sanchez. Mrs. Lange is asking me to turn in my composition that was due last week. The one I had already begged and pleaded for an extension. Well... If I didn’t complete the final English composition, then I didn’t graduate high school or really graduate from college. I have to go back to high school and complete....Bzzz....Bzzz...Bzzz...I think Mrs Lange’s cell phone is ringing, but why does she have a phone? The Buzz suddenly becomes my very real cell phone on my night stand and I realize its ringing furiously and awaking me from my slumber. Oh shit, it’s Jen.
Jen is a runner and when I say runner I mean the kind you just hate. She decided to take up running as some kind of “therapy” to get over her ex and personally, I think to torture all her friends. When Jen starts talking about hill training and interval running, you’d think she was a Pentecostal preacher at a tent revival. She is always on lookout for converts to her “church”. The almighty church of the marathon, which she was training for every day of her life. It’s not enough to have just a few running buddies in this church, you have to convert everyone you know. And since I’m Jen’s favorite work friend and she can be a really good listener when you have the blues, I drag my tired derriere out of bed at 5am so we can hit it before work.
“Hey Jen,” my first words of the day come out scratchy, like a chain smoker. “I’m already outside your building, we gotta hustle.” She sounds peppy even at 5am and I bet she hasn’t even had a drop of coffee.
I throw on some sweats and head downstairs to meet her. Jen is always dressed for the part, expensive workout gear was her uniform. She looked like a Nike ad, I looked like and escaped mental patient. We exchanged our mutual “hi” and started jogging. Jen started with work talk. I enjoyed talking about work when I wasn’t actually at work. Plus, Jen was great at her job and hobnobbed with the managers and other higher ups. “Holly, you’ve really got to start spearheading some projects around the office, Steve will definitely take notice. I mean, you’ve been there three years and I think he’s waiting for you to kinda take the lead on something, you know?” Although Jen was right, the thought of making Steve Holloman pleased made me nervous. If I pulled off a great presentation at work I wouldn’t be flying under the radar anymore. I be that high achiever, marathon running hobnobber. But I’d be privy to more gossip and speaking of.... “So got any dish on Steve and the new girl? I saw his eyeing her last week” I asked between sucking in air to my oxygen deprived body.
“Huh, he’s not the one interested, it’s Dan from human resources,” she spouted. I loved hearing the dirt on upper management. With me being a peon and all, Dan from HR and Steve from middle management seemed as remote and as clandestine as Hollywood celebrities or British royals. I relish in gossip, one of my many vices like drinking at lunch and envying girls with shiny hair.
Finally, after about a mile, my chest was heaving and Jen decided she’d just have to meet me at the office. She’d had enough of my inadequacy and sprinted off performing her holy sacrifice to the marathon church.
Despite being bested by Jen, I felt pretty good. I was up, I was alive and breathing in the chilly Chicago fall air.