“So,” he said awkwardly, “can I just hire you to do that for me?” Mike and I looked at each other. Could he? Our negotiation took place at the farmer’s market, that same day. I’d be a part-time Sales and Marketing Director. I’d get phantom shares in the company and a board seat. I’d work between twenty and thirty hours a week, doing three days in the office, so I could be more present with our kids. I left the farmer’s market that day with five pounds of squash I had no idea how to cook, and a new job.
That Monday, I put in my two-weeks’ notice at the agency and was immediately escorted from the building. I was free.
That first year at Coffee Collective was electric. I arrived every day ready to create something incredible, and we did. Dale was grateful for my expertise and valued my input. We tested every roast, named every coffee, and approved every design choice, together.
And then it happened. Dale’s parents, finally feeling that swell of parental pride in their third child, used some of their social capital to get the local business journal to come and interview their son. Dale was a nervous wreck, but I prepped him for days beforehand, filling his head with perfect pull quotes and impressive statistics. I bought him a new outfit just for the occasion: a fresh black hoodie and a crisp button-down to go under it, the perfect combination of professional and casual.
It worked.
Three months later, Dale’s face was on the cover, smirking boyishly from the magazine rack of every local grocery store. The writer had been charmed by Dale, by his work ethic and ethos. By me, via Dale.
Investors outside of Dale’s family showed up with buckets of money for him. The college “buddies” who had ditched him long before he failed out showed up “ready to help,” and pretty soon our little duo became five and ten and fifteen and twenty people, hired impulsively by a person who just wanted to be liked.
Someone had to be a grown-up, and that someone was me. I became more than just part-time sales and marketing. I became the COO. The CFO. The CMO. HR. Not officially—there was no title or salary change—but by default, the same way I became the who knows where the fire extinguisher is, and the person who had to explain to actual adult males why you cannot light fireworks indoors. Someone had to do it, so I did. I do. Every single day, for way more than four hours a day.
What we sell is five times more expensive than anything your parents ever drank, and we sell fuck-tons of it. We sell it to unnamed restaurants, to “general stores,” to anywhere there may be a piece of reclaimed wood and a man who was born a Chad but reinvented himself after college as a Silas. You know exactly who I’m talking about. Last year, we became the exclusive coffee partner for America’s third-leading airline. The year before, we got onto the shelves of two of the nation’s top discount retailers, which meant we were fast becoming the coffee of choice for the most powerful financial demographic in the US: moms.
My anxiety starts the moment I see our building. It took three architects and two “vibe experts” to create what Dale envisioned as “the chillest work zone ever.” Most of our space is devoted to “co-working zones,” areas that are free from individual workstations and “designed to foster cross-functional collaboration across departments.” Walking by, you might assume that it’s an adult daycare: oversize beanbags (really) cluster around a gas fireplace, a large kitchen fully stocked with sugary snacks, and ping-pong tables that are always in use. In one corner, individual “nap pods” are set up for our employees to “recharge.” My office, up a flight of industrial chic stairs, overlooks this entire scene. It’s like a terrarium of young millennials.
“Where have you been, Mama?” Tessa asks me the moment I walk in the door. She’s in the middle of a ping-pong game but has the courtesy to set down her paddle and pretend to be working when she sees me.
I’m the oldest person in our office by only five years, but that five years must seem like a lifetime, because they all call me some variation of “mom.” “I’m twenty minutes early!” I clip back to her, and she falls into step, pulling up my schedule.
“There’s no such thing as on time for you,” she says, and I know she’s right. It doesn’t matter when I walk in the door because I’m always booked to be in at least two meetings at once. I like Tessa. She’s smart as hell, and completely unafraid. She practices what she calls a “growth mind-set,” which I think just means she is open to trying new things and isn’t too upset when she’s not automatically good at them. I wish that mind-set had existed when I was younger. Tessa has been with me for a year now—the longest she’s been at any job, she keeps reminding me—and I want to help her develop into the professional I know she can be. I also want her to stop reading me her sex horoscopes and asking me to diagnose her rashes.
Tessa is in the middle of giving me the download on our weekly sales data when she stops suddenly and turns white as a sheet.
“Tessa?” I ask. “Are you okay?”
She shakes her head.
“I’m . . . really hungover. Can I have your trash can?”
I open my laptop and watch my unread emails pour into my inbox while Tessa heaves up last night’s mistakes.
To: McKinley Mom Squad
From: Gwendolyn James
CC: Principal Burr; McKinley Staff
BCC: Gwendolyn James
Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE: RE: MCKINLEY MOM SQUAD 2019!!!
Hi Mamas,
If you’re reading this, it’s because we haven’t heard from you about our McKinley Mom Squad Fiscal Plan. We have big plans for this year, and we can only accomplish our dreams for our children’s future if we have you on board! Please reply to this email within 15 minutes to indicate your preference for committees or fundraisers, or a duty will be assigned to you.
In Love,
Gwendolyn James
@GwendolynJamesStyle
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“The greatest victory is that which requires no battle.”
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War
“I had the weirdest dream last night.”
I didn’t even see Dale come into my office, but he’s circling a scooter around my coffee table like he owns the place. Which, fine, he does. But does he have to scoot everywhere? My kids are the actual target demographic for the exact scooter that Dale insists on riding, and even they have moved on from the need to glide through the house on what is basically a two-wheeled skateboard with a handle. At least when Dale walks, with the heavy, unathletic gait of a man whose main sport growing up was playing NBA Jam on his PlayStation, I can hear him coming.
I have no idea what Dale is saying. Something about a dream? As I always do in these moments, I reply with my default Dale response.
“Oh yeah?”
The question leads him to say more and indicates that I’m taking a small amount of interest in whatever he is saying. It placates him just enough that while he’s expounding on his latest brilliant idea, I can actually get my work done. I did the same thing with Dylan and Jane when they were little, and I was working from home. It worked until they realized that “Oh yeah?” meant that I wasn’t actually paying attention and they could go climb up on the counter to the cabinet where I “hid” their Halloween candy. Dale, bless him, hasn’t realized that yet. I thought that phase in my life was the most stressed I’d ever be. Agency life meant working sixty-hour weeks, screaming into the daycare parking lot at 5:58 and ignoring the glares from the teachers, who already had Dylan and Jane bundled up in their coats and ready to go. The center imposed a fee of five dollars per minute for late pickups, but as long as I crossed that threshold before the clock struck six, I was golden. Those years are a blur of cortisol and caffeine, and I was so sure that I had left them behind when I met Dale. Instead, I’m basically right back where I started, only with more children in my care.