I was sitting on my stoop on a lovely evening, listening to music. I had just gotten off the phone and thought I might just stay out a bit longer and enjoy the breeze in relative peace, when a cute, little, twenty-something blonde walked up and asked me if I had a light. I told her no and then without taking a step away, she reached into her pocket and pulled out a lighter, herself. Magical. I waited for her to walk away.
She did not walk away however, but stood uncomfortably close to me and started asking me questions. Do I live in the building? Well yes, yes I do. Does she live in the building? Well she used to but now she’s moving out to go to 49th and 9th. How nice for her. What do I do for work, she continues. I work in finance. With a bunch of men? Well yes, there are a bunch of men in finance. What kind of firm? Is it just a couple of guys ‘doing whatever’ and yelling at me to go get their coffee? Aren’t all of the women who work for hedge funds total bitches?
Important to note here, that I am a woman who works for a hedge fund. Also important to note, is the fact that I am not a bitch and do not work for a couple of guys who do whatever and yell at me to get their coffee. She was completely and happily oblivious to how offensive she was starting to become. As she went on sucking the air out of my dance area, she tried to light her cigarette.
Click went the lighter and I watched her cheeks cave in as she took the first drag. O no, wait…there was no first drag.
“I must have packed these really well”, she says.
I noticed she was lighting the filter and attempted to draw this to her attention. She ignored me and began a second attempt at igniting her nicotine filled implement. “You’re lighting the filter”, I said again. “Wow, I really packed these tight!” she replied, ignoring my advice that she turn it around and light the correct end. As she went in for the third attempt – without bothering to step back even an inch from her encroaching position – I became more forceful in telling her that she was, in fact, lighting the wrong end of the cigarette while simultaneously running over with stupid, uninformed comments.
By the time she listened to me, she had tobacco in her teeth from all of the fake inhaling. She threw the cancer stick on the ground and proceeded to get another and then began the same routine again.
“I would never, ever want to work for a hedge fund with a bunch of guys and bitchy girls.”
I retorted that she had obviously made some extremely wise career decisions. Turns out she’s a pharmaceutical rep. The kind that was most likely a cheerleader in high school and who was recruited to look cute and perky, show a lot of skin, flirt with drab, wrinkled, bespectacled doctors and whose main instruction is to try not to fuck things up too much.
At this point, I was more amused than annoyed as she maintained that she “wasn’t that drunk, for real” and continued her idiotic criticism of a world she knows nothing about. However the wind was stolen from my sails as she interrupted herself in mid-sentence and trotted off to tell a girl who had just walked out of the building that she loooooooved her. Good talk.
