Well, it was official. I was an idiot with a capitalI. The responses to those daily questions from my corporate overlords were not, in fact, anonymous. I couldn’t get Kenneth’s puckered little face out of my head. He’d been reading my answers all along! And, apparently, saying things like “I dream of one day throwing off the shackles of capitalism and bending the city of Seattle to my willas my true self, supervillainess Gull Girl” in response to “How do you dream big?” was enough to get me referred to a shrink.
I, Rachel Idiot Weiss, had been referred to a psychologist by HR.
At least I still had my job. For now.
You know, I could try to make a joke out of it. My job was truly terrible, and it didn’t pay that well. But Ididneed it. Everyone knows how expensive rent is. I had no car because who could afford that? Paying a hundred bucks a month for public transit was hard enough. I was still paying off debt to my parents from when they lent me my first month’s rent and security deposit. And I had credit card debt from ill-advised shopping and that trip to Cancún. And medical debt from the time I went to the ER with a broken toe from playing soccer in my Toms. Even with all that, I knew I was lucky, because my parents had been able to pay for my college. I hated this job, but I also needed it.
Sure, I could find another job if I needed to, but I had no savings. I would have to find another job, like, immediately. For some reason, Christopher Butkus’s words floated through my mind:You might be a force to be reckoned with. If you put your mind to it.I didn’t know about a force to be reckoned with, but deep down I knew that I had the potential to be good at my job, to be an actual professional. And clearly my MO of making a joke out of everything was proving dangerous. So that was it. No more messing around. No more funny business at work.
I could now cross “attend an employer-mandated shrink session” off my bucket list. They’d referred me to someone who wasn’t affiliated with the company, so maybe it was actually just likenormal, non-employer-mandated therapy. But she started with the old, “So, I hear you’ve had some trouble at work.”
“Not exactly.” I was grumpy.
“Would you like to tell me about it?” It was like all the therapy sessions I’ve ever seen on TV: she was a nondescript woman with a gentle smile and a notepad, and there was an abundance of pillows and tissue boxes around me. It was the only time I’d been in the spotlight and felt uncomfortable about it.
“Um.” I gave a nervous laugh. “We have to answer these stupid questions every day, and I like to give funny answers. You know, to entertain myself. I thought they were anonymous.”
She paused; I wondered if she counted to ten in her head before speaking.
“Why do you feel the questions are stupid?”
“Well.” I could feel my soapbox nudging itself under my feet like a friendly pup. “I think it’s an invasion of privacy to be constantly surveying us about our state of mind, our work environments, and our attitude toward our jobs. Working for a huge corporation, youknowyou’re just a cog in a machine, and it can feel dehumanizing when they’re constantly collecting metrics about you. They monitor how many hours I work every day, how many phone calls and tickets I answer, how many smiley faces the customers give me. It feels insulting to have to answer those prissy questions every damn day.”
She paused again; she must have counted to twenty this time.
“Do you like your job?”
I squinted at her. “Do you report back to my employer about what I say?”
She shook her head. “Rachel, everything that you or I say in these sessions is strictly confidential. I will never tell anyone what you say in my office.”
“Okay, then, no. There’s not much to like about my job other than the paycheck and benefits.”
“What would you do if money weren’t an object?”
I scoffed. “I can’t afford to think like that.”
Another ten seconds.
“What about your parents? What sort of careers have they had?”
I felt like I was getting whiplash from how quickly she pivoted to my parents.
“My dad is an aerospace engineer. My mom is a professional Jewish mother.”
“What does that mean?”
“She was a stay-at-home mom. Now she volunteers and has her clubs—knitting club and book club—and tries to marry off her daughters.”
“You have sisters?”
“Three. One older, two younger.”
“Tell me about them.”
“Jane, my older sister, is… well, perfect, really.” I heard my voice grow soft and happy. “She’s really smart, so beautiful that she doesn’t even have to try, and just the kindest person I’ve ever met.”
“That’s a glowing recommendation. What about your younger sisters?”
