Today is my first day at my new job! SQUEE! Right out of college and just in time to start paying back my student loans, I landed my dream job! Well I landed a job at the company I dreamed to work for, BCC. I’ll be in a pool of assistants who will be lent out to different departments on various tasks and…I FREAKING GOT A JOB AT BCC! Maybe if I’m lucky I’ll get a chance to meet Christine Banks or Nicole Castor-Cox. And while I’m fantasizing maybe Eva Wilder will walk in start talking to me and ask her to go with her to lunch—in Paris. Sigh!
I was really worried about working for a company so steeped in fashion and design. I started with the most important thing first, my lucky or as I sometimes call it, my matching underwear. Hopefully no one would see it today. Ya, that’d be my luck like some weird high school dream running around in your underwear while everyone points and laughs. Calm down Alexa. Lucky underwear, check. Flip through a magazine with Christine and Nicole in it. Choose LBD that I got at Macy’s. It seemed like a simple choice since it was the only thing that was dressy and clean.
Flip through magazine again. Look through shoes. Ignore all flats. Comfy, but sends wrong message to firm run by style icons. Look through the dozen or so heels I have. Start feeling anxious. Start by tossing out anything that isn’t luxury brand. Down to six pairs. Toss out two lowest pair of heels and two highest pairs of heels. Down to a fifty-fifty choice, the refined Manolo Blahniks, I got on clearance for 40%, or the slightly edgy Pradas, which caused me to eat Kraft Dinner for a semester and a half. I swear I was having the precursor to a heart attack just over choosing a pair of shoes, but you know you never get a second chance at a first impression. I had to walk out of the room, sip my cold tea and then come back. I was running out of time, so I just grabbed my black Guess pumps.
I had a quick look at my phone before stepping out. 62 degrees Fahrenheit. I quickly grabbed a pristine package of pantyhose and added them to my first day wardrobe. I put my hair up in a bun then ran out of the apartment, down the street to the subway.
It is only now sitting on said subway that I realized I forgot my key back in the apartment. I hope Alicia can drop off my key or be home later. Not a great start to my first day. Oh boy, my stop is coming up. Hopefully I can write about how awesome the rest of the day was later.
Well that was an interesting day! #understatement
It started with me almost being late and clacking across the lobby of 666 Fifth Ave. In the elevator someone sarcastically asked if I was going to a funeral. I hadn’t really thought about the fact that I was wearing black on black on black. My heart sunk as I realized I had zero colour save for a pale pink lipstick and the white framed sunglasses sitting on my hair. At least I quickly removed the cheap sunglasses before half the elevator stampeded out on my floor.
From there I went to reception and told them who I was and why I was here. They told me to stand over with a group of women—and some guys—who were also starting today. I was definitely overdressed, but not by much. At 9 AM precisely an old woman, maybe in her 30s, who wore a black pencil skirt and severe white blouse and had the demeanour of school head mistress took us in to a meeting room. There she lectured us on BCC policies and procedures and expected conduct and halfway through the orientation I was beginning to wonder if this was really the company I wanted to work for. It didn’t help that she kept looking at me, like I had committed a crime. A crime of fashion maybe? I was really worrying about my fashion forethought as I wondered why was I even here?
Despite having a BBA from a good school, I really needed money. I was vastly overqualified for this job on paper, but thought it would be a fun place to work and look very good on my resume later on. So in summary, fun place to pay the bills and impress future employers. That reminder made me sit up straight and pay attention to the house mom laying down the law.
After the orientation the HR lady, Ms. Robinson, took us on a short tour of the office. It was a very short tour and I wasn’t the only one disappointed by the lack of seeing anyone famous as we dodged women and men running around often in Sorkin-like discussions. The tour ended at the assistant pool office where we were to report every morning for daily assignments. Once we made a name for ourself people might request us and then we were climbing the ladder.
Ms. Robinson introduced us to the staff who would control out fates and then wished us luck. I was about to thank her as she passed me, but she wrapped her arm around my waist and told me to follow her. It was the only time I was ever in the intern pool room.
She read my face and told me I wasn’t in any trouble. I ran behind her as she talked back to me. She noted my resume and degree from NYU Stern. She pulled my application and read it thoroughly, she hadn’t sen someone with dual majors in Business and Art History. Either had I, I thought to myself. She asked if I was going to pursue higher education like an MBA/MFA. I hadn’t really thought that far ahead. I mean giving the honest answer of I just took course that were easy or interesting to me then realizing I might need a job after 4 years… In stead I said honestly I wasn’t sure what I was going to do.
Our journey ended far away from the big offices and the busy people. We sat in a dark room with no windows. As Ms. Robinson pulled a box off the shelf I realized we were in a warehouse of clothes and accessories—and possibly the Ark of the Covenant. The HR Dominatrix had chosen me to organize, itemize and record everything in the collection. My heart sunk. I couldn’t organize my own closet and it wasn’t even 4 feet wide. She handed me a laptop, which was not password protected nor Net Nanny-ed, and told me she’d check in around lunch to see how I was doing.
My first thought was to just open a browser window and hit Monster.com. Instead I started to pull out some boxes and see what was in them. It was samples of clothes and accessories. Some of it was interesting, some of it was out there. It wasn’t organized in any way I could imagine. Each box was a mix of stuff. Most of it didn’t have any labels. Some boxes had a blouse and two dresses. Others had a shoe, a handbag and a bracelet. Monster was calling to me when I grabbed a box and pulled out a white dress.
I stared at it for a bit. It was simple but very refined. The fabric was textured with a subtle brocade. I put it in front of me noting its lack of sleeves and falling just above the hem of my own dress. I really wanted to find a mirror and see if I looked anything like Jackie O like I did in my mind.
“You should try it on, it looks like it would fit you.”
The words made my heart skip a beat. And the person who had caught me fantasizing was none other than Nicole Castor-Cox, the CC in BCC. It was not the way I had hoped I’d meet her.
“I’ll hold the white dress as you take off yours”, she said seriously and without a hint of sarcasm. And as she took the pretty dress I felt compelled to obey my employer and stripped off my dark dress with the ease of removing a t-shirt. It was at that moment when I thought maybe my lucky/matching underwear was not up to snuff for a woman who had rolled around in Agent Provocateur and Sextrash lingerie sets for the world to see. She totally was judging me in my red underwear, I know she was.
“Take off the pantyhose.” It was a command, not a suggestion and she had no intention on handing over the dress until I complied. I know it sounds weird, but it wasn’t that I was standing in my underwear in front of the owner of the company that bothered me as much as the brand new dollar store pantyhose I had opened today already had a run in them. I got the feeling I wouldn’t be wearing pantyhose at this job, so I moved on.
In hindsight it could have been a bit creepy to have your boss sizing you up in your underwear—after you were caught fantasizing about the company’s resources. But at the time all I thought was that I was playing dress-up with a local celebrity. Sure she wasn’t as famous as Eva Wilder, but she was famous.
“Okay, we’ll try it your way.” I didn’t really understand what she meant until after she had given me the dress and I pulled it up. That’s when I realized my bra straps and the dress were incompatible. I was standing in front of a style icon who had been naked in innumerable ads in an unzipped dress and I knew what I was expected to do, but didn’t know if I could do it.
They say the first time is the hardest. I turned around with my back to her, fumbled with the clasp on my bra like a teenaged boy before sliding one strap off and the dress on—then quickly repeating on the other side. I don’t think I’ve ever felt so self-conscious since that time my bikini top came off diving at the public pool in middle school. It didn’t help that she was smirking or moved in to zip me up.
All the bad feeling I had were washed away when she lead me over to an unseen mirror. I did look like a Kennedy, albeit with worse hair.
“It looks good on you.”
I’m pretty sure that feeling I felt right then is the same way people feel when they get a call from the President.
“It’s a phenomenal dress and few people can carry it off, but there’s just one problem with it.”
I was about to wonder what she was talking about when I felt it. As great as it looked it was feeling very scratchy. I hadn’t even had it on for five minutes and I could feel the seams digging in to my sides then the backing rubbing like sandpaper against my skin. “I had to wear it for a whole evening to The Met. Almost lit it on fire after that night.” My boss knew the feeling of my discomfort—but curiously insisted I try it on.
She quickly rummaged through some nearby boxes before pulling out something. The something was a polyester stretch dress— white with some colourful decorations near the edges. I snatched it out of her hands and no longer cared that she saw me half-naked swapping the dresses.
I have to admit, I’m not the kind of girl who has a bunch of poly stretch dresses in her closet. I’m a jeans and t-shirt girl—or just a t-shirt if I’m not going out gal, but this was very comfortable, everything considered. And by everything considered I mean without a bra. So much for my lucky underwear now. My boss fetched a pair of white patent leather pumps as I admired myself in the mirror. Not such a tomboy now Mom.
The shoes didn’t fit exactly, but they sure did look good with the dress. Then my fashion godmother pulled out the pins in my hair and shook out my locks. She combed my light brown hair with her fingers until she was satisfied then stood a bit too close behind me as we admired the new me in the mirror.
“I’m Nico by the way”, like I didn’t know who I was playing dress up with.
“I’m Alexa Garber”, I said before adding, “I’m new—this is my first day.”
“I think you’ll fit in here just fine”, my boss said with her arms wrapped around my waist. “You can keep the dress and shoes”, she said as if it didn’t matter. “What are you doing here anyway”, she inquired stepping back and acting like we were just a couple of coworkers.
“I’m supposed to find a way to organize and account for everything here…”, my mission statement was interrupted with laughter.
“Good luck with that”, she genuinely wished me.
“Why are you here?”, I fearlessly asked her.
“The same as you, to try on some clothes and dream for a bit.” Her iPhone seemed to interrupt her thoughts. “Ya, ya. I’ll be up in a second.” And then as soon as that, she was walking out of the dark warehouse of lost fashions.
I spent the rest of the day alone in my new dress and shoes trying for the life of me how any of this could be organized and make any sense. It was as I got back to my apartment building that I remembered I had left my own dress and bra at work—and my keys in my apartment.
I decided to spend the evening having a coffee in my new dress until my roommate came home.
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