We were so dramatic.
I promised I would keep him updated before saying goodbye and getting ready for bed. It was early, but I wanted to be well rested and knew I’d be too excited to fall asleep right away, so I gave myself an extra hour.
It didn’t work. I tossed and turned most of the night and was still semi-awake when the alarm went off at seven.
Once showered, I put on a white dress-up silk cami, a black fitted blazer on top, and black slacks. The simple outfit was topped off with a rose-gold Marc Jacobs watch featuring a burgundy leather band.
After extensive research, Kai and I had decided this was the best outfit choice. Very grown up and office-chic, without seeming as though I was trying too hard.
We’d spent three and a half hours picking it out.
My curls went up into their usual bun, and I put some concealer under my eyes to cover the dark circles that were already forming. I’d watched about two dozen makeup tutorials trying to figure out how to do a cat eye but failed miserably every time. I couldn’t even get close to what they were doing. So, the concealer and a bit of mascara would have to do.
I took the elastics out of my braces that I’d been instructed by Dr. Mwangi to wear all day (there was no way I was showing up sporting bright blue elastics in my teeth), grabbed my classic leather Chanel bag, and ran out the door, practically vibrating with excitement.
I’d timed it perfectly. The Uber dropped me off at 7:48 a.m. I would be exactly ten minutes early by the time I rode the elevator up.
“You’re late.” Zac was standing up, flipping through a binder on his desk, when I was led into his office.
I didn’t know he wore glasses. They looked unbelievably good on him.
“Um, hi, Zac… I’m not. It’s 7:52. That, uhm, that’s what my phone says…” I trailed off, stupidly holding it up to show him. He kept his attention on the binder, making use of the yellow highlighter in his right hand, while I stammered through my sentence.
Mental note to self: hire a speech therapist immediately. Apparently, you need one.
“Andrew.” Zac called in the well-dressed aqua-haired boy with round glasses who had greeted me when I came in. He’d introduced himself as the “office assistant” for the eleventh floor.
“Yes, Mr. Evans?” Andrew popped his head back in so quickly it startled me.
“Did the introductory emails go out to the new interns last week with their schedules?”
Shit.
“Yes, sir, they went out on Thursday.”
I hadn’t thought to check my school email once summer had started, and that’s the one they had on file. We’d all applied to our internships during a Business Development class, and I’d filled it out on autopilot.
Honestly, I’d talked so extensively with my father about what the job entailed that I hadn’t thought there would be anything else to keep an eye out for.
All of a sudden, I felt underprepared. What the hell had I been doing last week? What else had I missed?
“Sorry… um, I think we’ll need to change the email address you have on file.”
“Andrew, could you please print out a copy of Miss Bloom’s schedule and duties and ensure we get the contact information corrected?”
“Absolutely. Milly, if you’d follow me, I’ll take you to your desk and we can get started.”
“And Ms. Bloom?” Zac finally looked up, capping the highlighter. “The interns here generally don’t address the associates by their first names.”
I followed Andrew out, thoroughly embarrassed.
“Rough start,” Andrew said as I sat down in my new chair. My desk was set up in the middle of the floor with three others in a square, all facing inward.
There were two offices on my left (the farther one of which belonged to Zac) and two on my right. “I wouldn’t sweat it too much though. He’s tough on everyone.” He took a seat at the desk facing mine.
According to the schedule he’d handed over, my day began at 6:00 a.m., not 8:00.
What the hell, why is he in so early?
“He really gets here at six every day?”
“Oh no.” Andrew waved his hand. “He gets in at like five thirty. But the coffee shop downstairs he likes doesn’t open until six. Your job is to be there when the doors open, grab his order, and bring it up to him. He’s usually organized enough by the time you walk in that he’ll have your work for the day ready.”
“That’s… efficient. So then, what time does he leave?”
“He works twelve- to fourteen-hour days on average. I’ve only ever seen him leave early to entertain clients or attend events.” He had started typing away on his keyboard which I took as my cue that he needed to get back to work.
The schedule and information document was more comprehensive than I had been expecting. It took me almost an hour to go through.
3
“Nothing about this is what I was expecting. At all. I’m exhausted,” I yawned. I’d been tempted to skip the call and go straight to bed. But I’d canceled on Kai so frequently lately that the guilt was starting to build up.
I was drowning in work. Constantly. Zac went through proposals and presentations so quickly that they’d assigned a second intern, Mai, to help relieve some of my workload.
You’d think the quality of his work would at least suffer a little considering how quickly he came up with the material, but it didn’t. The guy was really, really good at his job. Everyone knew it. He was smart, hardworking, and fantastic with his clients. My father’s praises had been earned, that much was clear.
There was only one problem with him: he was a straight-up asshat.
The romanticized version of him that I’d built up in my head was gone. Now I was a nervous mess for all sorts of different reasons.
He was never happy with my work, no matter how hard I tried. And he was never nice about it either.
I’d lost count of the number of times I had to redo projects and edits that weren’t up to his impossible standards. Today I had gotten scolded for not following the proper tab organization methods he’d outline in a thirty-four page “Proposal Review Manual” he’d thrown on my desk on my third day and told me to memorize, earning me snickers from Andrew and Mai. I’d used blue instead of purple to mark the second edits of a proposal, and he’d acted like I’d run the document through a shredder and dipped it in tar before turning it in.
The guy was insane.
I knew I wasn’t the only one that didn’t like working with him either. My theory was that people were just too intimidated or scared to say anything. I’d seen one of the interns from the accounting department come out of his office visibly upset a few days ago. And apparently Mai had found her crying in the bathroom shortly after. She wasn’t even supposed to be working with him, so what the hell was his problem?
“You have no idea, Kai. He’s the spawn of Satan himself. If, you know, Satan was an insufferable, neurotic workaholic with a stick the size of Idaho up his ass,” I continued to vent over the phone, eight and a half weeks into the internship from hell. “And the job is so boring. I’m not doing anything of substance! Just filing and editing, over and over and over again. I’m not learning anything which was the whole point of this internship in the first place. It’s so frustrating.”