Like most single women over 40, I don’t need to dress up for Halloween because my existence frightens people enough as is. Most people dress single women up in a variety of stereotypes that are far scarier than stock Halloween costumes for women. Who’s scarier, Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction or a haggard old witch on a broom? Now you see my point.
Every day is Halloween (without the candy), as others invent identities for us that bear little relationship to reality: the ultimate third wheel; the crazy aunt; the obsessed career chick; the frustrated spinster . . .
Having always dreamed of achieving exceptional levels of social and cultural conformity, I find the limited roles available to me troubling. The fact is, society has designed very few characters for an older single female that I am eager to play.
The Third Sexual Wheel. Sometimes marital boredom becomes such that one is pressed to invite others into the fold, to stir a pot a bit that they have difficulty stirring with their own teaspoons (no, I swear that’s just a metaphor). Yep, I have been “invited” (if you call a friend’s husband showing up unannounced and nude in your bedroom an “invitation”) to a threesome under the auspices of a leisurely golf weekend in the country. Unfortunately, threesome is not a game I play.
Crazy Aunt. I think my nieces and nephews genuinely like me, at times, but they have also been raised to recognize that my life is somehow wrong. When I was 36, my 6-year old nephew declared gleefully that I was an old maid. When I turned 40, my 8 year old niece thoughtfully suggested that I was ugly as a witch and should have my nose fixed—you know you can’t take any company for granted when your own niece tells you that you need plastic surgery. I still wonder whether she would have reached the same conclusion were I married and there were someone out there who had managed to like me in a long-term sort of way, despite my unfortunate appearance.
The Husband Stealer. As spinsters, we must be decidedly lonely. Therefore, my married female contemporaries, we must be after your husbands. If my alleged fascination with your husband makes him seem more attractive to you, then great, but, truth be known, I have no designs on him.
Desperate for a Divorcé. He’s a bit broken from a prior marriage and age has tarnished the single girl’s eligibility. So, then, what better a pairing for the 40+ single female than a divorcé looking for a second wind. We may be tabula rasa when it comes to marriage but we weren’t born yesterday. I would rather reread last Sunday’s paper than spend an evening with one of those divorcés who drones on wistfully about his ex-wife, what a great husband he was, and most appallingly, how no wife has ever been more sexually satisfied. Putting aside the crudeness of broaching the subject of physical intimacy on a first date, if a guy has to tell that to a near stranger, could he even possibly believe it himself? Sadly, that too was a true story.
Mrs. Cougar Robinson. As a woman of a certain age, I am not prohibited from speaking with 30 year olds of the male species but there are implications . . . Cougar is the label if you speak with a man 10 years younger than you, even if just to ask the time of day. More than 10 years? Then they start singing “Mrs. Robinson,” even when ironically, you're not married. At this age, the presumption is that I have no, and have never had, any maternal instincts. Mrs. Cougar Robinson is just an unsated animal on the prowl.
Frustrated Nun. Single at this point means you’re either uptight and moralistic or abnormal (and perhaps all of the above). I confess I’ve joked about becoming a nun, but, then I saw the movie Doubt. Now that I appreciate that male priests can indulge in wine and other pleasures every evening while nuns are not permitted to advance beyond skimmed milk, I’m no longer willing to don a habit.
Obsessed Career Psycho. Ms. Career Psycho can be satisfied only through financial and competitive achievement. Even modern cinema still casts her as the ball-buster who can love only her resume and her bank account, like the Chief Risk Officer (played by Demi Moore) of the thinly disguised Lehman Brothers in the recent movie Margin Call. As the aging CEO Jeremy Irons explains her severance arrangement and the fact that hers is the head that must roll before the bank dumps a ton of toxic assets into the market place, she toys with the ring on her finger, her right hand finger. It couldn’t be the left because women like this do not marry or experience the same range on the emotional spectrum as her male counterparts.
At the end of the day, we’re really not that scary or extreme. We’re not trying to seduce your husbands, we don’t bite, and we don’t eat our young (or your young for that matter, because we may not have any). We’re a lot more like you than you think: sometimes we’re happy and sometimes we’re not. We get tired, hungry, lonely, silly, etc, just like you. So just remember, when you see all those ghoulish characters out and about this Halloween, they are probably far scarier than a single female over 40.
Monday, October 31, 2011
Sunday, March 27, 2011
The "C" Word
It’s been a few months now that I’ve been wrestling with the “c” word. Every now and then it surfaces in my mind and I shudder. Such an awful word. Such horrible images.
To avoid ambiguity (or innuendo), I am not referring to anything that rhymes with “hunt” . . . The “c” word rhymes with “dancer.”
No sooner had a friend’s father passed away from cancer than my friend Priscilla Worthington* announced she too had cancer. I wish she had given me a heads up—I was somewhat hung over from a Saturday outing when she confided the news at Sunday brunch. I can understand why she was taken aback when I asked if it was malignant (in my muddled state, I had insensitively confused the concepts of “tumor” and “cancer,” which really are profoundly different).
Fortunately, by the end of brunch, like truly hardened NYers, we managed to laugh—hard—about the “c” word. First, most obviously, was the fact that the whole process would lead to weight loss, the obvious goal of any NYC woman. I was envious. Then we analyzed other angles, including the time I would have to take off from work to care for her post-surgery (translate: go to kick-ass resorts in the South or on the West Coast to ensure an optimal climate and maximum pampering for her recuperation).
Of course, I was assuming that (a) anyone in corporate America would give a damn that a colleague’s friend had cancer and (b) she didn’t really have cancer. Wrong on both accounts.
Last week I tried hard to escape the office to visit her in the hospital only to remain trapped in a partner’s office running in circles over something he was too lazy to think through on his own for what must be the firm’s tiniest and most clueless client.
Trapped again the next day, I announced that I had a hard stop, because I was visiting a friend in the hospital who had cancer. He must’ve thought I was playing the “c” card because he immediately countered with the sympathy card (or was that empathy he was aiming for?). He digressed for all of 10 seconds about a family friend who had had cancer before trapping me for another few hours so he could resolve a matter before he left for vacation, thereby eliminating any possibility of my going to the hospital.
He may be a chump who earns little respect at the firm but he’s still senior to me so even the least valuable of his clients and his vacation will always be a priority over any friend or relative of mine with cancer. Ah, the warmth and support of corporate America.
Corporate America cares. It throws money at the problem, buying tables at benefits. It doesn’t matter if it’s solely because of the competitive instinct it incites,* companies support these efforts and they are to be lauded, don’t get me wrong. It’s just a shame that so few support giving time rather than money, which not everyone has to give in the first place.
It’s not until you spend some time up close that you begin to have a sense of what the “c” word is about anyway. You have no idea how fragile and complicated our carcasses can be until you see one that’s wounded and ailing. For example, I thought laughter might help, but post-op, even a slight giggle might upset the flesh that’s been torn apart and sewn back together. Laughter, like many other things, will have to wait.
What shouldn’t have to wait, however, is making the time to sit still and talk, which despite this being one of the most social cities in the world, is something we don’t do as well as we think.
And so, after Priscilla had left the hospital, I spent one evening at her beside. Fortunately, not even nine hours of surgery and a bottle of percocet could make her forget the importance of a glass of pinot grigio—there was a glass of wine in my hands within minutes of my arrival.
To pass the time and distract her, together with her family who were visiting, we reviewed and analyzed exhaustively the most noteworthy dating episodes and incidents from the past six months of our lives, inevitably concluding that NYC-based men are truly a troubled and troublesome breed.
By the time I left Priscilla’s, it was late, past dinnertime. So I slipped into a neighborhood pub on my way home to grab a bite and review the draft of a short story a friend was writing before heading to bed.
I wound up sitting at the bar, stuck between Duane, who kept telling me he loved me because I had agreed to edit a friend’s story (with such a low emotional threshold, I imagine he falls in love at least 4 times a week—how exhausting) and George, who was desperate to tell me about how he’d recently been dissed by a potential suitor. Was he looking for sympathy or did he think this was the best way to recommend himself? I kept my mouth full so I would be excused from any obligation to respond.
Although the sight of Priscilla’s fragility and the signs of the obvious pain she was in (before she slipped another valium) made me flinch, I’d take an evening chatting with her and her family, completely isolated from the hustle and bustle and general chaos outside, over the company of NYC men anytime.
Notes
*Some of you will remember Priscilla from an earlier post: http://penelopefrost.blogspot.com/2010/11/case-of-priscilla-worthington.html
*If you’ve ever attended a benefit with a corporate group, you know the first thing every one does when they sit down at their $15-20,000 table is open the program and figure out which organizations gave more.
To avoid ambiguity (or innuendo), I am not referring to anything that rhymes with “hunt” . . . The “c” word rhymes with “dancer.”
No sooner had a friend’s father passed away from cancer than my friend Priscilla Worthington* announced she too had cancer. I wish she had given me a heads up—I was somewhat hung over from a Saturday outing when she confided the news at Sunday brunch. I can understand why she was taken aback when I asked if it was malignant (in my muddled state, I had insensitively confused the concepts of “tumor” and “cancer,” which really are profoundly different).
Fortunately, by the end of brunch, like truly hardened NYers, we managed to laugh—hard—about the “c” word. First, most obviously, was the fact that the whole process would lead to weight loss, the obvious goal of any NYC woman. I was envious. Then we analyzed other angles, including the time I would have to take off from work to care for her post-surgery (translate: go to kick-ass resorts in the South or on the West Coast to ensure an optimal climate and maximum pampering for her recuperation).
Of course, I was assuming that (a) anyone in corporate America would give a damn that a colleague’s friend had cancer and (b) she didn’t really have cancer. Wrong on both accounts.
Last week I tried hard to escape the office to visit her in the hospital only to remain trapped in a partner’s office running in circles over something he was too lazy to think through on his own for what must be the firm’s tiniest and most clueless client.
Trapped again the next day, I announced that I had a hard stop, because I was visiting a friend in the hospital who had cancer. He must’ve thought I was playing the “c” card because he immediately countered with the sympathy card (or was that empathy he was aiming for?). He digressed for all of 10 seconds about a family friend who had had cancer before trapping me for another few hours so he could resolve a matter before he left for vacation, thereby eliminating any possibility of my going to the hospital.
He may be a chump who earns little respect at the firm but he’s still senior to me so even the least valuable of his clients and his vacation will always be a priority over any friend or relative of mine with cancer. Ah, the warmth and support of corporate America.
Corporate America cares. It throws money at the problem, buying tables at benefits. It doesn’t matter if it’s solely because of the competitive instinct it incites,* companies support these efforts and they are to be lauded, don’t get me wrong. It’s just a shame that so few support giving time rather than money, which not everyone has to give in the first place.
It’s not until you spend some time up close that you begin to have a sense of what the “c” word is about anyway. You have no idea how fragile and complicated our carcasses can be until you see one that’s wounded and ailing. For example, I thought laughter might help, but post-op, even a slight giggle might upset the flesh that’s been torn apart and sewn back together. Laughter, like many other things, will have to wait.
What shouldn’t have to wait, however, is making the time to sit still and talk, which despite this being one of the most social cities in the world, is something we don’t do as well as we think.
And so, after Priscilla had left the hospital, I spent one evening at her beside. Fortunately, not even nine hours of surgery and a bottle of percocet could make her forget the importance of a glass of pinot grigio—there was a glass of wine in my hands within minutes of my arrival.
To pass the time and distract her, together with her family who were visiting, we reviewed and analyzed exhaustively the most noteworthy dating episodes and incidents from the past six months of our lives, inevitably concluding that NYC-based men are truly a troubled and troublesome breed.
By the time I left Priscilla’s, it was late, past dinnertime. So I slipped into a neighborhood pub on my way home to grab a bite and review the draft of a short story a friend was writing before heading to bed.
I wound up sitting at the bar, stuck between Duane, who kept telling me he loved me because I had agreed to edit a friend’s story (with such a low emotional threshold, I imagine he falls in love at least 4 times a week—how exhausting) and George, who was desperate to tell me about how he’d recently been dissed by a potential suitor. Was he looking for sympathy or did he think this was the best way to recommend himself? I kept my mouth full so I would be excused from any obligation to respond.
Although the sight of Priscilla’s fragility and the signs of the obvious pain she was in (before she slipped another valium) made me flinch, I’d take an evening chatting with her and her family, completely isolated from the hustle and bustle and general chaos outside, over the company of NYC men anytime.
Notes
*Some of you will remember Priscilla from an earlier post: http://penelopefrost.blogspot.com/2010/11/case-of-priscilla-worthington.html
*If you’ve ever attended a benefit with a corporate group, you know the first thing every one does when they sit down at their $15-20,000 table is open the program and figure out which organizations gave more.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Of Mice and Men . . . and Invisible Suitcases
As I wait for winter to end and for life to begin, I keep returning to the same topic: Why am I still single?
As a girlfriend observed, until I’ve bagged a man, I’ll have no one to kill mice in my apartment. Hmm, not my immediate concern (nor necessarily my measure of a man), but I do appreciate her unusual perspective.
I’m not deluded enough to believe winter would be less depressing if I had someone special. Chances are someone “special” would exacerbate my cabin fever, compete for the remote control, and desecrate the toothpaste tube. Yet these aggravations seem like inconveniences I should be experiencing at this point in life.
Did I miss a turn? Am I wandering along the wrong life path? It’s fine if my path is “less traveled,” but what if my path is deserted and leads to a dark cave inhabited exclusively by trolls and other social pariah?
Despite many promising starts in 2010 (remember: 2.25 boyfriends!), 2011 has disappointed so far. As I approach the end of Q1, I am at a loss to explain Penelope’s poor results. The company’s fundamentals are still quite solid: reasonable looks; athletic; sense of humor; employed, etc. I’ve seen companies with far weaker fundamentals attract strategic partners and double their growth in just a two year period. But I guess I'm not a company listed on the NY Stock Exchange.
There was that one promising encounter in mid-January . . . I was approached by a handsome young man (yes, I still think 45 is “young”) at my local pub. Five minutes of conversation yielded an unprecedented number of coincidences: a former member of my golf club; friends with my college squash buddies; and resident in an apartment across the street from me.
Before long, I was basking in his attention. The late night emails following our impromptu drink didn’t hurt either (“That’s the best time I’ve had in a long time;” “I think you’re beautiful and sweet;” and, “Can I take you to dinner?”).
At last, I had incontrovertible proof that a man was interested in me. And he was a scratch golfer. It seemed too good to be true. And so it was . . .
There was no follow up, despite my accepting his dinner invitation. The acceptance hung out there awkwardly as a testament to our uneven expectations: his, a diversion to perk up his nightcap; and mine, an exciting new beginning to something/anything, which might even culminate in the first real date of 2011.
Most who have analyzed the incident have concluded that Scratch Golfer was not ambivalent about his level of interest in me but was probably married. Married? Only a dog would send emails like that if he had a wife at home! I’m not fool enough to believe men stop being dogs when they marry, but I thought they respected the borders of their marital kennels with a bit more subtlety. Apparently not . . .
With my one lead for 2011 gone, I pondered how I would avoid another decade of eating alone.
At this point in life (long in the tooth but not totally out for the count), people tend to form bonds based on their baggage. I don’t mean by whining over what’s flawed in their past, but by tactfully comparing select life-transforming experiences that felt gut-wrenchingly awful while being experienced.
By way of illustration . . . : a few years ago I invited a girlfriend to join me for drinks with a handsome Swede I’d been spending time with recently. Within three sips, I morphed from the object of his focus to an unnecessary third wheel, as he and my girlfriend swapped notes over their respective divorces. As they discussed the division of marital assets, their eyes lit up in shared understanding. I knew by the way they regaled each other with tales of ceding furniture to their ex-spouses that they were already imagining sharing certain assets with each other. I had nothing to contribute to this exchange. My baggage looked nothing like theirs and was clearly not worthy of discussion.
But what is Penelope’s baggage anyway? I see obtuse career decisions and some low grade anxieties, but that's the stuff of petite French handbags and silk evening purses, nothing like the large suitcases most of my contemporaries are carrying. No divorces, no ex-spouses, no stints in rehab, not even a stalker in my past. Have I been living under a rock?
The thing about baggage is that while we can easily identify others’, our own remains invisible to us. How can I make sure my baggage is neatly tucked underneath the seat (as baggage should be) if I don't even know what mine is?
Whether I like it or not, 20+ years living solitary—while others married, divorced, remarried, became felons or joined a cult—has probably left some scars that others can see and that I’ve never noticed.
Maybe my baggage is not as grand as it should be, but with some luck, maybe I have just enough baggage to meet a kind-hearted man with a large invisible suitcase and a good golf swing.
As a girlfriend observed, until I’ve bagged a man, I’ll have no one to kill mice in my apartment. Hmm, not my immediate concern (nor necessarily my measure of a man), but I do appreciate her unusual perspective.
I’m not deluded enough to believe winter would be less depressing if I had someone special. Chances are someone “special” would exacerbate my cabin fever, compete for the remote control, and desecrate the toothpaste tube. Yet these aggravations seem like inconveniences I should be experiencing at this point in life.
Did I miss a turn? Am I wandering along the wrong life path? It’s fine if my path is “less traveled,” but what if my path is deserted and leads to a dark cave inhabited exclusively by trolls and other social pariah?
Despite many promising starts in 2010 (remember: 2.25 boyfriends!), 2011 has disappointed so far. As I approach the end of Q1, I am at a loss to explain Penelope’s poor results. The company’s fundamentals are still quite solid: reasonable looks; athletic; sense of humor; employed, etc. I’ve seen companies with far weaker fundamentals attract strategic partners and double their growth in just a two year period. But I guess I'm not a company listed on the NY Stock Exchange.
There was that one promising encounter in mid-January . . . I was approached by a handsome young man (yes, I still think 45 is “young”) at my local pub. Five minutes of conversation yielded an unprecedented number of coincidences: a former member of my golf club; friends with my college squash buddies; and resident in an apartment across the street from me.
Before long, I was basking in his attention. The late night emails following our impromptu drink didn’t hurt either (“That’s the best time I’ve had in a long time;” “I think you’re beautiful and sweet;” and, “Can I take you to dinner?”).
At last, I had incontrovertible proof that a man was interested in me. And he was a scratch golfer. It seemed too good to be true. And so it was . . .
There was no follow up, despite my accepting his dinner invitation. The acceptance hung out there awkwardly as a testament to our uneven expectations: his, a diversion to perk up his nightcap; and mine, an exciting new beginning to something/anything, which might even culminate in the first real date of 2011.
Most who have analyzed the incident have concluded that Scratch Golfer was not ambivalent about his level of interest in me but was probably married. Married? Only a dog would send emails like that if he had a wife at home! I’m not fool enough to believe men stop being dogs when they marry, but I thought they respected the borders of their marital kennels with a bit more subtlety. Apparently not . . .
With my one lead for 2011 gone, I pondered how I would avoid another decade of eating alone.
At this point in life (long in the tooth but not totally out for the count), people tend to form bonds based on their baggage. I don’t mean by whining over what’s flawed in their past, but by tactfully comparing select life-transforming experiences that felt gut-wrenchingly awful while being experienced.
By way of illustration . . . : a few years ago I invited a girlfriend to join me for drinks with a handsome Swede I’d been spending time with recently. Within three sips, I morphed from the object of his focus to an unnecessary third wheel, as he and my girlfriend swapped notes over their respective divorces. As they discussed the division of marital assets, their eyes lit up in shared understanding. I knew by the way they regaled each other with tales of ceding furniture to their ex-spouses that they were already imagining sharing certain assets with each other. I had nothing to contribute to this exchange. My baggage looked nothing like theirs and was clearly not worthy of discussion.
But what is Penelope’s baggage anyway? I see obtuse career decisions and some low grade anxieties, but that's the stuff of petite French handbags and silk evening purses, nothing like the large suitcases most of my contemporaries are carrying. No divorces, no ex-spouses, no stints in rehab, not even a stalker in my past. Have I been living under a rock?
The thing about baggage is that while we can easily identify others’, our own remains invisible to us. How can I make sure my baggage is neatly tucked underneath the seat (as baggage should be) if I don't even know what mine is?
Whether I like it or not, 20+ years living solitary—while others married, divorced, remarried, became felons or joined a cult—has probably left some scars that others can see and that I’ve never noticed.
Maybe my baggage is not as grand as it should be, but with some luck, maybe I have just enough baggage to meet a kind-hearted man with a large invisible suitcase and a good golf swing.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Being Dumped, On Television
I looked out my window last Saturday and decided it was get-in-touch-with-ex-boyfriends season. I’m not sure whether it was the cloud cover or the temperature that tipped me off, but somehow I just knew.
So, I started to work my way down the list alphabetically. I was striking out. All of the ones in A through C were married with children so getting in touch would be awkward, and probably highly inappropriate from their wives’ perspective. I needed to respect the cardinal rule of intergender friendship for single female adults of this age: thou shalt not remain friends with ex-boyfriends unless they are also single and/or gay (which leads to interpretive challenges when they are heterosexually married AND gay).
A few letters later in the alphabet, I stumbled on the Evil Englishman. We had dated sometime in the 1870s, or so it seems, and he remains single, so he is safe (possibly too safe). Some of you will recall that I had an unremarkable lunch with him a year ago, a lunch that surprised me by how little we had to say to each other.* But, a year later, maybe he had become more interesting, or I had become far less interesting so he would seem more interesting in comparison.
So, I lobbed over a short email to his work address politely asking how 2011 was treating him so far. I immediately received a “Mailer Daemon” message. I scrutinized the error message for signs of obvious falsification. Truth be known, I have drafted false email error messages in the past rather than respond to someone with whom I no longer wished to be in contact. Cowardly? Yes, yet surprisingly effective.
The error message appeared legitimate. But how could he have left the bank he’d been at for 20 years? That bank was his life and he loved those trading screens like they were his next of kin (if he could have married an algorithm, he would have, but I suspect he would’ve been disappointed with their sex life). Only an assassination could explain this, although I recognize that fixed income derivatives traders are so rarely the subject of assassination attempts these days.
I launched a formal investigation and reached out to a friend with a Bloomberg account so she could sleuth discreetly on my behalf. Bloomberg is like Facebook for traders, except that it’s essentially mandatory for those living in “real time,” like traders (lawyers tend to live in “unreal time” where they tell a client they will send a document “shortly,” only to produce it days later . . .).
If the Evil Englishman weren’t on Bloomberg then clearly the assassination theory, no matter how far-fetched, was valid. My friend typed, searched, and found . . . some odd news. Within minutes she was able to pull up a story, which had appeared just 20 minutes earlier, confirming not only that he had left his senior post but that he had learned of his own departure the day prior thereto while listening to a “breaking news” segment on CNBC. Ouch!
We’ve all heard friends’ horror stories about being dumped by voicemail or email, which stings, but being dumped on public television must be devastating, not to mention uncivilized. As far as I know, only Matt Damon has dumped someone on national television (Minnie Driver).
Guys can break up in any medium because, well, they can. They incur no legal liability in doing so. There are no laws that govern these types of transactions. It’s generally a bit tougher for banks to do this, even if an employee is “at will,” because there are reputational concerns at stake as well as potential liabilities to address.
His bank was walking away from a 20 year commitment and couldn’t even muster the decency to alert him in advance. Isn’t this something HR could have done? Maybe that’s why guys tend to break up over email and voicemail nowadays—they have no HR department to do the “in-person” job for them.
Later in the day, a spokesperson for the bank denied the story, but “Business Insider” explained that it would keep the story posted because it had been communicated to them by a “friend from work” of the Evil Englishman, which introduced a new level of indecency. Which is worse, the fact that your employer allows your termination to leak to public television through its own sloppiness before telling you, or the fact that your “work buddy” (who has inevitably been described as “collegial” and a “team player” in his 360 degree review) chose to share this delightful anecdote with the press ? What a swell friend. Left me wondering about my good friends in the corporate world, or is there such a thing . . .
How implausible that a white shoe firm that prided itself on its elitist standards for over 75 years should discard of top talent in such a crass manner. Then I recalled the Evil Englishman confiding in me a decade ago that he thought his bank was “headed to the shitter” (which sounds far less vulgar with a British accent). Had culture in corporate America, even in white shoe firms, decayed so dramatically in just a decade? Were their white shoes now muddied by greed for a quick profit, or had their shoes always been filthy but it was easier to hide a decade ago, when the Internet was still in its infancy and Wall Street press was easier to control?
Notes
* http://penelopefrost.blogspot.com/2009/11/lunch-report-x-lunch.html
So, I started to work my way down the list alphabetically. I was striking out. All of the ones in A through C were married with children so getting in touch would be awkward, and probably highly inappropriate from their wives’ perspective. I needed to respect the cardinal rule of intergender friendship for single female adults of this age: thou shalt not remain friends with ex-boyfriends unless they are also single and/or gay (which leads to interpretive challenges when they are heterosexually married AND gay).
A few letters later in the alphabet, I stumbled on the Evil Englishman. We had dated sometime in the 1870s, or so it seems, and he remains single, so he is safe (possibly too safe). Some of you will recall that I had an unremarkable lunch with him a year ago, a lunch that surprised me by how little we had to say to each other.* But, a year later, maybe he had become more interesting, or I had become far less interesting so he would seem more interesting in comparison.
So, I lobbed over a short email to his work address politely asking how 2011 was treating him so far. I immediately received a “Mailer Daemon” message. I scrutinized the error message for signs of obvious falsification. Truth be known, I have drafted false email error messages in the past rather than respond to someone with whom I no longer wished to be in contact. Cowardly? Yes, yet surprisingly effective.
The error message appeared legitimate. But how could he have left the bank he’d been at for 20 years? That bank was his life and he loved those trading screens like they were his next of kin (if he could have married an algorithm, he would have, but I suspect he would’ve been disappointed with their sex life). Only an assassination could explain this, although I recognize that fixed income derivatives traders are so rarely the subject of assassination attempts these days.
I launched a formal investigation and reached out to a friend with a Bloomberg account so she could sleuth discreetly on my behalf. Bloomberg is like Facebook for traders, except that it’s essentially mandatory for those living in “real time,” like traders (lawyers tend to live in “unreal time” where they tell a client they will send a document “shortly,” only to produce it days later . . .).
If the Evil Englishman weren’t on Bloomberg then clearly the assassination theory, no matter how far-fetched, was valid. My friend typed, searched, and found . . . some odd news. Within minutes she was able to pull up a story, which had appeared just 20 minutes earlier, confirming not only that he had left his senior post but that he had learned of his own departure the day prior thereto while listening to a “breaking news” segment on CNBC. Ouch!
We’ve all heard friends’ horror stories about being dumped by voicemail or email, which stings, but being dumped on public television must be devastating, not to mention uncivilized. As far as I know, only Matt Damon has dumped someone on national television (Minnie Driver).
Guys can break up in any medium because, well, they can. They incur no legal liability in doing so. There are no laws that govern these types of transactions. It’s generally a bit tougher for banks to do this, even if an employee is “at will,” because there are reputational concerns at stake as well as potential liabilities to address.
His bank was walking away from a 20 year commitment and couldn’t even muster the decency to alert him in advance. Isn’t this something HR could have done? Maybe that’s why guys tend to break up over email and voicemail nowadays—they have no HR department to do the “in-person” job for them.
Later in the day, a spokesperson for the bank denied the story, but “Business Insider” explained that it would keep the story posted because it had been communicated to them by a “friend from work” of the Evil Englishman, which introduced a new level of indecency. Which is worse, the fact that your employer allows your termination to leak to public television through its own sloppiness before telling you, or the fact that your “work buddy” (who has inevitably been described as “collegial” and a “team player” in his 360 degree review) chose to share this delightful anecdote with the press ? What a swell friend. Left me wondering about my good friends in the corporate world, or is there such a thing . . .
How implausible that a white shoe firm that prided itself on its elitist standards for over 75 years should discard of top talent in such a crass manner. Then I recalled the Evil Englishman confiding in me a decade ago that he thought his bank was “headed to the shitter” (which sounds far less vulgar with a British accent). Had culture in corporate America, even in white shoe firms, decayed so dramatically in just a decade? Were their white shoes now muddied by greed for a quick profit, or had their shoes always been filthy but it was easier to hide a decade ago, when the Internet was still in its infancy and Wall Street press was easier to control?
Notes
* http://penelopefrost.blogspot.com/2009/11/lunch-report-x-lunch.html
Friday, January 21, 2011
Survey of Winter Blues Management Techniques
Penelope has been somewhat reticent lately (hence the infrequent Lunch Reports)* as she struggles with the increasingly groundhog-day-esque feel of her day-to-day existence. Wake up, dress (yet who cares what wear this time of year), work, lunch (always within the $3 limit), sunset (gone already? Geez), 5 mile run, more work, feed cats, dinner, inhale glass of wine (or several), watch Golf Channel, sleep . . .
Every year, about this time of year, winter stands tall before me, a menacing presence that promises to impose itself for an unbearably long time. It doesn’t matter whether it's 60 degrees out or -6 degrees, because there's still over 8 weeks to go and during that time the weather is sure to fluctuate and frustrate beyond all reason.
And each year I explore new ways to push back the winter and maintain a convincing smile in the dead of winter.*
One year I ran through the winter, in complete denial of the cold and its effects on me. I wound up with walking bronchitis, but, thanks to all those endorphins sloshing around and working themselves into a happy lather, I also got through the winter with cheer and was absurdly fit when spring arrived.
I’ve never understood folks who extol the change of the seasons. I don’t need winter to appreciate summer. The contrast does nothing for me. Summer could last all year long, although I don’t mind the fall and spring stuff that nature tosses in like an annual bonus.
There was the year I golfed my way through winter, booking a trip south every other weekend. My handicap went from a 24 to a 12 but my savings were cut in half as well. By March 1st, I realized I could no longer afford Seasonal Affective Disorder, or my means of coping with it.
The very next year, I dated my way through winter, with the assistance of the Internet, of course (who has a deep enough bench of friends that they can field a new set-up once a week without some cyber assistance??). This was the winter of my real discontent. It produced myriad enduring stories but not a single male who endured beyond a first date.
Yet another year I entertained a scientific approach, enhancing my daily exposure to natural light by leaving my bedroom curtain open.* It helped, until the open curtain introduced my feline roommate to the pigeons perching outside my window at dawn each morning, in turn prompting him to hurl himself at the pigeons to kill them and protect his master from the wicked birds defecating indiscriminately.
No matter how many times he repeated the exercise, sadly, he couldn’t understand that a double window separated him from his prey. Convinced he might suffer brain damage as a result of blunt windowpane trauma, I eventually closed the curtain and returned to the dark.
I continue to explore new techniques for blues management but what should Winter 2011’s project be? What can I entertain, or what can entertain me, so that I forget winter has arrived and won't loosen its grip on me anytime soon?
I’ve already solicited advice from select friends, whose suggestions range from becoming a Christian Scientist (it may make more sense to attend my own church more frequently before switching religions altogether) to rekindling my stale passion for skiing (why pay to be cold when I can stay in NYC and freeze for free?). Now I’d like to put the question to a broader audience.
What can I do to confront those recalcitrant moods and make them yield more gracefully, if not effortlessly? Even the treadmill has become tired of the unrealistic expectations I invest in it each time I step on for another run.
And how will I know if I am successful? Each day I fight harder, but am less certain of any discernible progress. Perhaps my standards are too high, because when I asked a close friend whether I was winning the fight against the blues, she assured me that if I was alive and still able to ask the question, I was winning . . .
So, Penelope is inviting her readers to write in with suggestions for managing the winter blues and to share success stories of overcoming the demons that rule many of our winters.
Penelope
Notes
*For those new to The Lunch Report, please see http://penelopefrost.blogspot.com for back issues.
*See “Happy Meals for Sad People,” http://penelopefrost.blogspot.com/2009/10/lunch-report-happy-meals-for-sad-people.html
*Exposure to natural light is just one of many techniques recommended for managing Seasonal Affective Disorder. See, Avery, DH; Kizer, D; Bolte, MA; Hellekson, C, “Bright Light Therapy of Subsyndromal Seasonal Affective Disorder in the Workplace: Morning vs Afternoon Exposure,” Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica (2001)
Every year, about this time of year, winter stands tall before me, a menacing presence that promises to impose itself for an unbearably long time. It doesn’t matter whether it's 60 degrees out or -6 degrees, because there's still over 8 weeks to go and during that time the weather is sure to fluctuate and frustrate beyond all reason.
And each year I explore new ways to push back the winter and maintain a convincing smile in the dead of winter.*
One year I ran through the winter, in complete denial of the cold and its effects on me. I wound up with walking bronchitis, but, thanks to all those endorphins sloshing around and working themselves into a happy lather, I also got through the winter with cheer and was absurdly fit when spring arrived.
I’ve never understood folks who extol the change of the seasons. I don’t need winter to appreciate summer. The contrast does nothing for me. Summer could last all year long, although I don’t mind the fall and spring stuff that nature tosses in like an annual bonus.
There was the year I golfed my way through winter, booking a trip south every other weekend. My handicap went from a 24 to a 12 but my savings were cut in half as well. By March 1st, I realized I could no longer afford Seasonal Affective Disorder, or my means of coping with it.
The very next year, I dated my way through winter, with the assistance of the Internet, of course (who has a deep enough bench of friends that they can field a new set-up once a week without some cyber assistance??). This was the winter of my real discontent. It produced myriad enduring stories but not a single male who endured beyond a first date.
Yet another year I entertained a scientific approach, enhancing my daily exposure to natural light by leaving my bedroom curtain open.* It helped, until the open curtain introduced my feline roommate to the pigeons perching outside my window at dawn each morning, in turn prompting him to hurl himself at the pigeons to kill them and protect his master from the wicked birds defecating indiscriminately.
No matter how many times he repeated the exercise, sadly, he couldn’t understand that a double window separated him from his prey. Convinced he might suffer brain damage as a result of blunt windowpane trauma, I eventually closed the curtain and returned to the dark.
I continue to explore new techniques for blues management but what should Winter 2011’s project be? What can I entertain, or what can entertain me, so that I forget winter has arrived and won't loosen its grip on me anytime soon?
I’ve already solicited advice from select friends, whose suggestions range from becoming a Christian Scientist (it may make more sense to attend my own church more frequently before switching religions altogether) to rekindling my stale passion for skiing (why pay to be cold when I can stay in NYC and freeze for free?). Now I’d like to put the question to a broader audience.
What can I do to confront those recalcitrant moods and make them yield more gracefully, if not effortlessly? Even the treadmill has become tired of the unrealistic expectations I invest in it each time I step on for another run.
And how will I know if I am successful? Each day I fight harder, but am less certain of any discernible progress. Perhaps my standards are too high, because when I asked a close friend whether I was winning the fight against the blues, she assured me that if I was alive and still able to ask the question, I was winning . . .
So, Penelope is inviting her readers to write in with suggestions for managing the winter blues and to share success stories of overcoming the demons that rule many of our winters.
Penelope
Notes
*For those new to The Lunch Report, please see http://penelopefrost.blogspot.com for back issues.
*See “Happy Meals for Sad People,” http://penelopefrost.blogspot.com/2009/10/lunch-report-happy-meals-for-sad-people.html
*Exposure to natural light is just one of many techniques recommended for managing Seasonal Affective Disorder. See, Avery, DH; Kizer, D; Bolte, MA; Hellekson, C, “Bright Light Therapy of Subsyndromal Seasonal Affective Disorder in the Workplace: Morning vs Afternoon Exposure,” Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica (2001)
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