Chapter 1
“The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.” — George Eliot
I stare at my inspirational quote from George Eliot and wonder if she has somehow known from the beyond that I needed these words more than ever this Monday morning. You know, and happened to make this my January 5th page on my calendar today.
I take a sip of coffee from my bright pink tumbler, the one with “Girl Boss” scribbled in a cute, gold font across it, and swallow down the acidic office blend. Oh, I had big plans coming here last year. I was going to kick serious butt and put myself on the fast track to be a Girl Boss. I landed here at Melon and George—one of the highest-end department stores in the United States—a couple of months after graduation from the University of Illinois, working as an assistant buyer in the women’s luxury handbag division.
I was full of ambition. I had a plan, and I had laid out each step with precision to achieve my goals. I was going to be a big girl boss in fashion buying.
Ha-ha. Life was so much simpler as a new graduate moving to Minneapolis and ready to take on the world.
Before the real world took my career plans, threw them into a Vitamix blender, and shredded them into oblivion, that is.
My computer comes to life, the sleek monitor greeting me with “Hello, Taylor Hartigan” and a gorgeous picture of a beach and palm trees.
I wish I was on a beach. Under an umbrella reading some delicious romance book with a hot, tattooed body on the cover and sipping a brightly-colored cocktail. Basically, forgetting my life.
Because right now, my life is a hot mess.
I type in my password, one that always makes me feel a combination of stupid and immature and yet brings a smile to my face when I do:
If I ever had to give this to IT to fix a computer issue, I’d die, but it’s practically the bright spot of my day, thinking of the hockey player I met more than a year ago when he crashed into the Plexiglas in front of me, shattering it and causing me to throw nachos all over myself.
Normally, wasting nachos would cause me great distress, because nachos give me life, but when I looked into the whiskey-colored eyes of the player asking me if I was okay, I immediately concluded that losing those nachos was fine.
That moment—that one accident—resulted in me being viral on social media and meeting Hunter after the game, where he presented me with new nachos. We ended up exchanging numbers, but he was playing in San Francisco at the time. We don’t text, but we do comment on each other’s social media platforms. I’m smart enough to realize that he’s in Houston now, as he was traded over the summer, and I’m in Minneapolis, so anything more would be impractical.
I glance out the window of the sleek office I’m in, the one with modern desks and chairs and samples of the collection we are buying for next season, to the large windows overlooking downtown Minneapolis. The snow is falling, again, and the sky is a dreary gray.
Hunter is just starting his day in Houston, getting ready to head to the rink for practice in a few hours.
If only we could be in the same place at the same time.
I clear the thought from my head, as it’s irrelevant. A lock of my shoulder-length, jet-black hair falls across my cheek, and I tuck it behind my ear and draw a breath of air for courage. I click on my inbox, and before I even have a chance to read the first one, an IM from my boss, Lorna, pops up in the corner of my screen:
Please be more punctual, Taylor. It’s critical you be at your desk and ready to work on East Coast hours, as most of our vendors are in New York. Which you should obviously have grasped by this point.
I grind my teeth. It’s two minutes after eight.
I have no doubt she was sitting there, waiting for my computer to come to life and to see my in-office notification light up, to pounce on me like a lion stalking a gazelle.
I have half a mind to type back that it took my computer a few minutes to come to life, but Lorna is always right.
Before I can even respond, a second message drops in. This is another thing I’ve noticed with Lorna. She only communicates by IM, so there’s no trail of a conversation, and it’s easier to scream at me for not doing something she never told me, because she obviously told me in a phantom message I never saw.
Have you followed up on the PO for those orders we talked about on Friday? Is there a reason I don’t have a status on this? Didn’t I text you about this on Saturday night?
My stomach grows more acidic. Yes, I did follow up, I followed up four times, and the vendor never gave me an answer. I sent Lorna an email detailing this before I left the office at seven-thirty on Friday night, but apparently, she didn’t read it. Of course, Lorna will claim she never received it and that I should have IM’d it, but I wanted an electronic trail, so I emailed it.
Oh, and she never texted me about this, or I would have answered.
This is just one of the battles I fight with Lorna. Every. Single. Day.
Another sentence pops up in the IM box:
I have sent you your personal progress form this morning. I expect that back after I return from the sales meeting.
I scribble this on my notepad. Lorna will go into that meeting with management and analyze the sales from last week. Which hopefully will be good, as people will have received gift cards for Christmas and, with any luck, were enticed to use them for new handbags. That will take at least an hour, so that’s when I’ll tackle that personal progress form.
Ugh. We get those every few months to track how well we are doing on the job. In another few months, I’ll have my review for being here a year.
A year. That seems impossible.
I pause again, staring at the window. I would have quit after six months if my parents hadn’t talked me out of it. They told me I was being unrealistic about my career, that it was demanding work, and I needed to be a woman and deal with it.
Those comments still sting. I’ve always wanted to work in fashion. I knew it was a hard business that would require everything I had. I do work the long hours. I put up with a horrible boss. I am not a quitter, and the fact that I was considering it nearly killed my soul.
The thing is, I thought I’d find that the passion I have for fashion would carry me through the long hours and challenges with Lorna.
To my surprise, it’s not.
I swallow hard. I love fashion so much: the way it can transform a person, the way an individual can express themselves through it, the multiple interpretations of it. Those are all the reasons I happily spend hours online putting together looks. The reason why I can study the pictures in Vogue and see the editorial direction they are taking the outfits. The way the right dress can raise a woman’s confidence in herself.
That’s what I love.
But I’m doing none of that here.
In my head, I thought fashion buying would be the ideal career for something I’m so passionate about. That I would help the team curate what we wanted for seasons ahead and bring new options to consumers. There would be the excitement of seeing a bag I selected in stores, and even more thrilling, seeing it sell well.
Instead, I’m mired in tracking purchase orders. Complicated Excel spreadsheets. Finding errors in budgets. Booking travel for Lorna. Changing travel for Lorna. Taking the heat when she can’t get her preferred seat on a flight. Working harder and faster than I ever dreamed possible.
I knew going in that these would be my duties. I always thought if I could see a path forward, for my future, I could cope with it. However, I’ve come to the realization that the small group of buyers here at Melon and George, the ones in the coveted senior buying positions that pay well, as opposed to the scrape-by wage I’m currently making, never leave.
Yet the turnover on the assistant level is very high. One girl hired a week after me, to assist the menswear buyer, quit after three months. Another girl in activewear just turned in her notice last week, after six months.
Wow. I’m practically long in the tooth here.
I’ve come to realize that is how fashion buying is. There are millions of girls like me, ready to take the low wages, work the crazy hours, all for a shot at a senior buying position someday.
I just don’t know if waiting for someday is worth it.
If you would have told me I’d feel this way when I first started this job, I would have laughed. No, I knew what I was doing. I knew it would be hard. I knew leaving my friends and family in Chicago would be worth it to work for Melon and George.
But what happens when the dream doesn’t match up with reality?
I shake off the feeling. I’m close to achieving that one-year anniversary. Maybe in my progress report, something will change. Something to give me hope that I’m headed in the right direction and that I can have a shot at buying in the future. Perhaps I’ll even be rewarded with a small budget and the chance to prove to them I can buy on-trend items that will increase the bottom line of the company.
I’m about to click open my report when my phone vibrates. It’s parked next to my notepad, and I take a moment to glance down at it.
It’s a text from my best friend, Collins. She’s engaged and working her dream job as a riding instructor. The last time I saw her was over Christmas, when I was home for two days, and I had drinks with her and Luca Ballerini, her fiancé, who also plays hockey, but for the Chicago Buffaloes.
Ha, now this is funny. Collins is engaged to a Chicago Buffalo, and my friend Livy Holder married a Chicago Buffalo this summer. She and Landon married in Chicago in a small, intimate wedding at the Chicago Botanic Garden, and I was one of the bridesmaids.
You would think fate was telling me that my destiny would be to date a Chicago Buffaloes player.
Too bad Hunter plays for Houston, or I might believe it was meant to be.
I read her text:
Wish you were here for our girls’ dinner at Livy’s house tonight. I miss you, even though I just saw you!
My heart catches as I read her words. I miss her and Livy so much. I never dreamed how much I’d miss my friends and the city of Chicago.
I text back:
I know, I feel the same. If Livy offers kale, please avoid it on my behalf.
I smile after I hit send. I love Livy to pieces, but her love of kale is beyond me. I swear she eats it at every meal. Collins hates it, too, so she’ll appreciate the joke.
I get back to my inbox, and after noting all the action items Lorna wants done before our meeting at ten today, I click back on the progress report.
I hover the cursor over it, afraid to open it.
It’s going to be brutal.
Lorna’s mantra is: “Fashion is a tough business, so you need to be tougher. If you care enough to survive.”
Do I want to survive this? Is this what I truly envisioned or wanted?
I blink. Shit. I’m never this honest with myself about my feelings. Usually, I like to throw those in a box, seal the lid with duct tape, and kick it under the bed. Forget about them. Shove them away and stuff them down.
Deal with them later.
Or never.
I click open the review email. Lorna tells me to read her comments and prepare to have a “frank” discussion as to how I can move forward in my career journey at Melon and George.
This is so not going to be good.
I click it open. Of course, I skip over the areas I perform well in, which no surprise here, Lorna kept amazingly brief. Ha.
But there is a bullet point list under areas to improve:
*Must demonstrate greater follow through in purchase order tracking. I don’t care if the person is not available. What I care about is a problem-solver who can find the answer. Telling me you are “trying” to get the update is not acceptable.
*Quicker response time to my emails and IM’s. Overall, your speed in your work is lacking. You must be able to move faster on sales analysis.
*Please do better regarding my personal schedule. Reminding me fifteen minutes before a meeting is not acceptable. I insist on reminders at twenty minutes and ten minutes before said meeting time.
*Question yourself. Do you really have what it takes to succeed in this business?
My heart is pounding in my ears as I read Lorna’s last comment over and over.
Do I really have what it takes to succeed in this business?
No, that’s not the question. I know I do.
But as I sit here in this office, surrounded by some of the most luxurious handbags in the world, I realize I don’t want to.
I can’t do this for the next twenty years of my life, hoping that by age forty I can oversee my own department and forecast trends. I don’t want to be in Minneapolis anymore. I don’t want to feel like I’m not doing my best for Lorna when I know I am.
I’ve always done everything according to the plan.
My eyes land on my inspirational quote calendar again.
“The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.” — George Eliot
I have a choice, I think, my mind racing. It’s not the plan, but I don’t like the plan anymore. I can make a different choice and grow in a new direction.
For the first time since I’ve started this job, peace washes over me.
I know what I’m going to do.
There’s no doubt it’s the right thing, no matter how let down my parents are going to be by my decision.
I hit reply on the email to Lorna and type a simple message:
I resign my position, effective immediately.
I don’t hesitate for a second and hit send.
My new life begins now.
Starting with a flight back to Chicago tonight.