Bert’s been like a man on a mission, handing out demerits.
“Conference room!” Bert barks as he bursts through the door. “Mandatory, all-company call. Now.”
Lacey goes up to Bert, clutching her notebook, looking terrified all the way to the roots of her purple hair. “W-what is this about?”
“A new generation of the Eadsburg von Henningslys is taking over Wycliff, and there’s an important introductory address,” Bert says, broad cheeks glowing pale pink under the stark lighting. He is a big man, an ex-football player with a crew cut and intensely scrubbed-looking pink cheeks, almost porcelain-looking in certain lighting.
“Um… Who are the Eadsburg von Henningslys?” Lacey asks.
I wince. I know what Lacey’s doing—she’s trying to stall Bert, trying to give us time to finish up and hand the package off to the bike courier who’s currently waiting down on the street.
“The family that owns the Wycliff corporation? SportyGoCo’s parent company? AKA your employer?” Bert barks, in a tone designed to suggest she’s the biggest fool ever.
“A new generation?” Lacey asks, playing dumb.
“The son’s stepping up. Some kind of Euro race car driver.” Bert claps his hands. “Come on, people, get in there.”
Design team members scurry past, hoping to avoid Bert’s wrath.
It’s here that Bert turns his attention to Renata and me. “This isn’t optional.”
I keep working. “We’re just wrapping up this package. Fifteen minutes. This is our bread-and-butter line for—”
“Not optional,” he interrupts. “Demerits for anybody who’s not there in two.”
“Can we finish this up in the conference room while we listen to the address? If we don’t make the cutoff, we’ll lose all of this work.”
“And whose fault is that?” Bert demands.
It’s like he’s daring me to say yours. “Staff only.” He turns to Size Ten Tina. “Out.”
Tina gives me a sympathetic look and heads off to change. I choke back my tears. A sure-thing Target slot: Gone.
“Sorry,” Renata whispers to me, standing. She can’t afford another demerit—she already has two.
So do I.
There’s a mocking light in Bert’s eyes. “Thirty seconds.”
Devastated, I grab my phone and follow the rest of the staff into the conference room.
Months of work. My first flagship design.
Crashed.
The full design department—all two dozen of us—are assembled around the conference room table, dead silent, expressions grim.
Bert looks on smugly, a vampire feeding off of our low morale, then heads off, presumably to make sure the rest of the departments are being prevented from doing anything productive.
Whispering starts up at the far end and I can distinctly hear the words gotta get out of here and fuck this.
SportyGoCo was the best place to work before the Wycliff-pocalypse.
There’s a rumor that if our sales numbers don’t rise in a matter of weeks, they’re closing the company.
The speakerphone crackles. We’ve heard these addresses before—they’re ridiculous and buffoonish. Some old guy who loves the sound of his voice, and you’re supposed to be grateful, I suppose.
“We’ve built this place and we can save it. We’re a family,” I say.
No response. People just look defeated.
My heart twists. This group here saved my ass more times than I can think, especially when I first came to the city, naïve and bewildered. And when it became clear I’d never earn an actual living as an actress, they helped me channel my passion for fun clothes into a career.
Aside from Bert, any one of these people would give me the shirt straight off their backs, and I’d give them mine.
Or more like I’d make one that’s even better, full of sequins and sparkles, and give them that.
“A new generation taking over,” I say. “Maybe it’s good news. Maybe the younger generation will make things better.”
“Yeah, it worked great in North Korea,” Shondrella says. “Oh wait, umm…”
“A European racecar driver billionaire,” Lacey mumbles to our side of the table. “Like, seriously?”
“It doesn’t matter who runs that thing,” Renata says. “These sorts of people own so many companies, they can’t even name them all. Nothing will change.”
“And we still have Unicorn Wonderbag,” I point out. “We’ll get to work on Wonderbag, and everything will turn around.”
The speakerphone crackles. A man comes to announce there will be an announcement. He talks about what a good thing it is to have a steady hand in times of turbulence.
“Which turbulence?” somebody grumbles. “There are so many turbulences.”
“Who can keep track?” somebody else jokes.
The voice on the speaker talks about the company history, and finally introduces Jaxon Harcourt Eadsburg von Henningsly. The five-part name gets an eyeroll.
Jaxon Harcourt Eadsburg von Henningsly, our fearless new leader, begins to speak in a beautiful baritone voice. Too bad the things that this beautiful voice says are every bit as pompous and ridiculous as every other speech from the billionaire Wycliff owners, or as we call our parent company: the “why not jump off a cliff?” owners.
My heart sinks as the son spouts phrases like, “soldier on in the face of adversity” and “do not despair but rather square your shoulders in the direction of the future.”
Back when the evil, faceless Wycliff corporation first took over and started up these ridiculous addresses, people would make finger-pointing-down-the-throat gestures and self-stabbing motions.
And I would look at them scoldingly, because I’m the senior person now, the mom of the design department.
Now they don’t even bother to make the gestures. That’s how deeply everybody’s spirit is crushed.
In real life, I’m not that professional or mom-like. At home with my girlfriends, I can be silly, but one thing doesn’t change and that’s my work ethic. I always like to be achieving, whether it’s making videos of our apartment building or doing a bit part in one of my friends’ weekend plays or making food or saving this company—and my fashion design career.
Professionalism is a muscle that anybody can build—that’s what I always say. Act as if. Right? But I always make sure to wear one sparkly thing, like a pin or a belt or a shoe ornament.
Jaxon Whatever-von-Henningsly drones on about how he’ll continue the leadership that we’ve grown to respect and admire.
I can feel morale plummeting like a thousand anvils off a thousand Road Runner cliffs. Another obnoxious out-of-touch owner a universe away.
Cringe.
They said this son was European, but he definitely has an American accent. Is that what rich people do? Live in different places? I would never up and move like that. A person needs roots. They need their people.
On he drones, “We shall turn our gazes toward a productive future, full of pride and promise and joint prosperity.”
It’s so outrageous, considering they’re destroying this company.
Shondrella makes a half-hearted self-stab. Her self-stab says, why even bother with a self-stab? Shondrella’s going on four decades in the design business, and she says she’s never seen a design house go downhill so fast.