The Knockoff (30 page)

They had good intentions to make love that night. And yet, once
again, exhaustion, physical and emotional, overcame them both and, as usual, they chose delirious sleep over married sex.

Ashley learned fairly early on working for Eve that there was a direct correlation between how many flattering Instagram photos you posted of her and how much she liked you. And so, Ashley made it a best practice to post at least two well-filtered shots of her boss each and every day, always with flattering hashtags (#HauteBoss, #Cute-orCutest?). This made her immune to much of Eve’s regular ire. Eve’s better side was her right and so during the snow day she posted pics of Eve from the right making guacamole in her sweats and pretending to meditate on her snowy balcony, her legs crossed in the snow, thumb and forefinger purposefully balanced on her knees.

“Pissed” wasn’t the right word; she just felt like she was being used as a pawn in Eve’s grudge match against Imogen and that was the worst. She got shitty service at Eve’s creepy apartment. Saying she needed privacy, Eve reluctantly pointed her toward a full bathroom off her bedroom, which was all white on white, like a room in a mental hospital, and it immediately became clear why Eve hadn’t been letting the women into the room.

The bathroom was small but clean and the stark white of the walls made the yellow Post-it notes stuck all around the bathroom surface stick out all the more. Written in Eve’s measured hand were reminders, most obviously meant for her to read to herself in the mornings: “Be nice.” “Say thank you.” “Be polite.” “Remember to smile.” “Make eye contact.” They were instructions for how a sociopath should behave to seem human. Beneath them, in hot pink lipstick, cursive letters read: “You deserve everything!”

From: Eve Morton ([email protected])

To: [email protected]

To Whom It May Concern,

I am writing to you to express my interest in giving a TED talk at this year’s annual TED Conference. I LOVE your series and have listened to it since I was an MBA candidate at Harvard Business School.

I currently run one of the most influential fashion brands in the world, Glossy.com, formerly
Glossy
magazine. I have been snowed in with my staff for the past twenty-four hours, during which I had a brain spark I had to share with you.

Here is what I am proposing: I want to give a talk at your conference entitled, “Adapt or Die.” Catchy title, right? I think this talk has the opportunity to trump Tony Robbins’s talk on why we do what we do or Steve Jobs’s talk on how to live life.

My concept stems from my personal experience. I am currently working in an environment with people who are two generations older. Their ability to grasp the very basics of technology, the future of business and their desperation to cling to the old tenets
of our industry will be their demise. It is positively Darwinian in its simplicity. I think I may be the first person to make this connection. ADAPT OR DIE IN THE WORKPLACE. These dinosaurs have been told the asteroid is coming and still they keep going about life as usual. It is as if they don’t fear the extinction. Meanwhile, my generation is coming in hard and fast, ready to take over.

I am telling you. This talk will kill. IT WILL ABSOLUTELY KILL! I would love the chance to discuss this with you more. Please feel free to reach me on this email.

Have a Good, Great, Gorgeous, GLOSSY! Day!!!

Eve Morton, Editorial Director, Glossy.com

From: Amy Tennant ([email protected])

To: Eve Morton ([email protected])

Dear Ms. Morton,

Thank you for your submission to TED. As you can imagine, we receive thousands of applications for TED talks each week. At this time, we will not be able to accommodate your request for a talk. And, while we rarely comment on the proposals that we receive due to the fact that we here at TED truly believe that creativity and innovation manifests in a variety of ways, I did want to send a note to let you know that this talk would be offensive and go against the very ethics of TED, which strives to be inclusive rather than exclusive. As a proud woman of 53 years old, I believe this is an idea best kept to yourself.

Warm Regards,

Amy Tennant, Director of Talent Curation, TED

A magical army of plows and salt trucks did their work overnight, making Imogen’s morning commute surprisingly smooth.

She’d succumbed to her husband’s advice and was scheduled to meet with Worthington at eleven a.m. She wouldn’t be catty. She’d present the facts. Her employees were dropping like flies.
Glossy
’s reputation in the industry was going down the tubes. Eve abused the designers. They didn’t want to work with them anymore. Morale at the office was at an all-time low, no matter how many spin classes they did or how many jugglers or international DJs she brought in.

Imogen wasn’t nervous. A weight lifted the night before and she was ready for whatever Worthington threw at her. If he told her to get the hell out of his office, that Eve was good for business, she would walk out and feel confident that she didn’t need to come back.

She was even unfazed when Eve walked into Imogen’s office and flounced onto her couch first thing that morning, crossing the legs of her pristine orange Juicy Couture track pants. She wore a plain white T-shirt with bold black writing:
DON
’
T WORRY, BE YONCÉ
. All Imogen wanted was to go through her customary morning routine, check her emails and run through the schedule of stories for the site.

“Where were you yesterday?” Eve asked archly. What a witch.

“I was at home.”

“Why weren’t you at my place?” Eve volleyed back.

“I didn’t know anyone was at your apartment until late yesterday. No one told me.”

“That’s not true,” Eve countered. Imogen could tell Eve was having a difficult time suppressing a smile. “I emailed you first thing in the morning and I texted.”

“I never got an email or a text from you, Eve.”

“You probably missed them,” she said.

That was the thing about technology these days. You could blame a text or an email disappearing on spam or a faulty connection. It was never anyone’s fault.

“You never sent me an email or a text, Eve.”

“I most certainly did. It’s weird you didn’t get it. Anyway, we had a really productive day. You should have been there.”

“How late did the girls stay?”

“Oh, they slept over. We had a slumber party. Everyone camped out on the floor. We baked frozen gluten-free pizza. We danced. We
came up with a whole choreographed routine to Beyoncé’s ‘Crazy in Love.’ Want to see?” Before Imogen could say that she had no interest at all in seeing the coordinated dance routine, Eve crossed to her side of the desk. She held her phone horizontally and hit play.

It was very clear, from the looks on the staffers’ faces, that no fun was being had. This could have been filmed in Guantánamo. There was Eve, front and center, belting out the lyrics, feet hip-width apart, bouncing her fists next to her waist before her hips went left and then right and her arms crossed in front of her chest. The other girls followed along, aware they were being filmed, not happy about it. One would think Eve would notice their lack of enthusiasm when she flipped her hair around her head and turned to shake her ass for the camera, but she was just too into it.

“Is that not the most amazing thing you have ever seen?” Eve grinned with pride. “I think we should put it on the site.”

“I don’t think so,” Imogen said, pushing Eve’s phone away so she could look at her own computer screen.

Refusing to be ignored, Eve perched on top of Imogen’s desk, kicking the wood with her sneakers.

“What did ya think of Mack’s shoot?”

“You mean Alice’s shoot.”

“No, Mack was the one who took the pictures. And you know what that proves? It proves we don’t need to pay someone like Alice a small fortune.”

If Imogen hadn’t been there, hadn’t seen Alice get knocked over and drop that phone with her own two eyes, she would swear that Eve had found some way to sabotage that phone and Alice and the entire photo shoot.

“We got lucky, Eve.”

“No. Mack was just younger and smarter and quicker. Alice is a dying breed that’s about to go extinct.”
Same as me, right, Eve?
Imogen thought. She didn’t say anything out loud. Eve began kicking the desk harder.
Thud, thud, thud, thud
.

“Anyway, you should have come yesterday. It’s bad for morale when you don’t show up for these things.”

“Eve, like I said, I definitely wasn’t told anything about it. You can
swear that you sent me an email. I don’t think you did. I didn’t get a text from you. More than that, I told the staff to stay home. They could have worked from home. Most of New York City worked from home yesterday. There was no reason for them to come to your house and learn a ridiculous coordinated dance to Beyoncé.”

Eve’s eyes narrowed to slits.

Imogen looked through the glass wall and out onto the main floor. No one out there looked like a happy member of any team. They looked exhausted, bedraggled, like people who hadn’t slept in their own beds. She could tell some of them were dressed in Eve’s clothes—so many Juicy tracksuits and oddly fitting Hervé dresses.

“This isn’t camaraderie, Eve. This is a forced labor camp.”

“
You
don’t get it. You’re never going to succeed in tech, Imogen. You don’t get it. It’s about building communities, about building a team. There isn’t room for people like you here, for lone wolves!” Eve underscored her point by raising her head to an imaginary moon, letting loose a howl and pivoting on her rubber sole to stalk out of the room. Six months ago the exchange would have shaken Imogen to her core. Now she took it in stride. She logged on to the TECHBITCH page and wrote a comment.

“My techbitch just forced the entire office to learn a coordinated dance to Beyoncé’s ‘Crazy in Love.’ Then she howled like a wolf pup.”

Within minutes she had six smiley faces, four LOLs, four ROFLs and a gif of a delighted rhesus monkey hopping up and down.

She felt a swell of love from these fellow victims, or rather survivors, of techbitches the world over.

At quarter till she pulled out a compact to check her makeup and ran a comb through her hair.
God, I look tired
.

The desk for Worthington’s two assistants stood empty and for a moment Imogen wondered if, influenced by Eve, the publisher fired them in favor of an army of Outzourced assistants overseas. But no, they were merely inside Worthington’s office, both typing away on MacBooks, busy, and still homely.

“Imogen Tate,” Worthington’s voice boomed, his elaborate comb-over rising above his prominent brow. Only after she sat down in one
of the chairs opposite his desk did she notice brown cardboard boxes lining the back wall. Worthington wasn’t in his regular suit. He wore Nantucket Red chinos below a well-cut blazer with a jaunty matching red pocket square.

“Redecorating?” she asked. “I’ll make a couple of calls if you want to switch designers.”

He chortled and slapped his thigh. “Remember the days of putting the interior decorators on the company dime? Ahhhh, we had some fun, didn’t we? No, I’m not redecorating. Moving.”

The hairs on the back of Imogen’s neck curled as she wondered if times had gotten so bad that Robert Mannering Corp. would need to sell their building and relocate somewhere cheaper—like New Jersey. She shuddered.

“Where are we going?”

“Not we, Imogen, just me. I’m happy you called this meeting. I wanted to talk to you in person before I made the announcement to the entire magazine group. I’m leaving Robert Mannering Corp.”

For a brief moment Imogen wanted to make a joke about Eve taking Worthington’s job next but she bit down on her tongue.

“Where are you going? Why did you quit?”

“I didn’t quit. Took a buyout. They’re about to be offered to all us old dogs, all the senior management. The company wants young blood in here. They want cheap blood in here. I hung on as long as I could. I hired people like Eve, but I know I’m not what they want.”

Imogen was speechless, but surprised to realize she was not as surprised as she should have been.

“What will you do?”

“Going to Thailand for a month or two. The women there.” He whistled loudly. “They do things that you probably can’t even imagine. I mean. Of course, the wife will be joining me, but you never know….” He wiggled his eyebrows up and down as Imogen forced her face to remain completely neutral.

“Sounds like a wonderful trip. But you can’t just go on permanent vacation. Can you?”

Worthington joined Imogen on the couch, jauntily crossing one
stubby leg over the other, his thigh touching hers in a way that made her skin crawl. “They aren’t getting off scot-free here. I’m getting an excellent compensation package that will pay my many alimony payments for at least the next year. I could teach. I’m still on the board at the business school at Columbia. I have so much wisdom to impart,” he said very earnestly, his face about three inches from Imogen’s, his breath smelling of cigars and Altoids.

“I’ll get rid of the apartment in the city, or rent it out, go out to the beach, spend time with my kids. This isn’t ideal. I would have run these magazines until they ran me into the grave, but our directors don’t want magazines anymore, at least not the kind I made. Everything is changing and I don’t know if I want to keep up with it.”

It was the most human she had ever seen her boss.

“When are you telling everyone?”

“I’ll make the announcement this afternoon. The board is going to meet to decide who else they want to offer a small golden parachute to, so to speak.”

“What kinds of people are getting the offer?”

“I think they’ll make the offer to anyone who makes in the mid–six figures, anyone whose salary they don’t think they can justify in this new world of publishing. We can offer you one too, Imogen. But you don’t have to take it.”

“Don’t I?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I’ve seen you adapt more over the past few months than I have over the past ten years. You’re starting to get it.”

“Then why would I get offered the buyout?”

He sighed. “Your salary is high and you’re over forty. Ageism is alive and well. It’s just sugarcoated with lovely going-away presents. Think about it. Like I said, you’re doing a great job. You have what it takes to keep running that website, but you could also take the opportunity to try something new.”

“I don’t want a buyout right now,” Imogen blurted out with a conviction she hadn’t known she felt.

“So be it. I’ll let the powers that be know you have spoken. So what did you come up here to talk to me about?”

Imogen thought for a moment. Why bring up Eve now? The point
was moot.
Worthington won’t even be her boss much longer
. Someone more Eve-like would likely take his place.

It took a minute to sink in, but Worthington had given her high praise, had said she’d adapted. It was true. She’d learned more about tech in the past three months than she’d learned during the ten prior years. It wasn’t without pain and sacrifice, but staying in her job was a possibility if she wanted it. But knowing that she could take a buyout and start doing something totally new was an intriguing proposition.

“What will happen to
Glossy
? Will
Glossy
still be
Glossy
?”

“I imagine that
Glossy
will continue to exist in some shape or form forever. It’s a great brand, a household brand. Women know
Glossy
. They trust
Glossy
. But between us, the website isn’t doing as well as Eve had projected. There is talk…no I shouldn’t even bring this up right now.”