My only hope was that Crystal needed new employees enough—or was courageous enough—to give me a chance. Wasn’t it ironic that I was hoping Crystal would be more merciful than I?
I forced myself to stop thinking about it. Then, one morning when I was in Grand Central Station, my cell phone rang.
“Mike?”
“Yes?” I answered with some suspicion. The person on the other end didn’t sound like anyone I would know.
“It’s Crystal.”
My guarded attitude changed instantly.
“Oh, hi!” I said enthusiastically. “So good to hear from you!”
“Do you still want a job …,” she paused, and continued coolly, “working for me?” It was as though she were eager to hear a negative response and get on with her day. I imagined she had a list of potential new hires she was working through. And most of those on the list were probably easier for her to imagine working with than me.
“Yes, I do want to work with you,” I almost yelled into my cell phone. “I am looking forward to working with you and your great team.”
Calm down, Mike, I told myself. Don’t be overenthusiastic. And why had I said “team”? Crystal had talked about “partners.” I knew that every company had a vernacular that was important to reflect if you wanted to be treated well. I was already going crazy trying to fit in. Take it easy, I said to myself, or you will blow this last chance.
It didn’t seem to matter—Crystal didn’t really seem to be listening. You know how you can be talking to someone on the phone and sense that they are pretending to listen to you while doing something they feel is more important? I felt that way that day with Crystal. For me, this phone call was of crucial importance. To her, it was just another chore in a hectic day.
The casual way in which she offered me the job was humiliating.
“Okay,” she said. “Show up at my store at Ninety-third and Broadway at three-thirty P.M. tomorrow.”
“Ninety-third and Broadway?” I echoed, surprised by the address.
“Yes.” She sounded like she was instructing a three-year-old. “Ninety-third … and … Broadway, and don’t be late.”
I was confused. “But we met at Seventy-eighth and Lex.”
“So?” She was almost threatening. “I met you there ’cause we had a hiring Open House going on. That’s the way we do things at Starbucks.”
Crystal had taken on a tone I knew well. I had used this corporate by-the-book attitude when dismissing people I did not want to deal with.
“At Starbucks,” she continued, “we pick a store, have an Open House, and the managers who need people interview. But that doesn’t mean that’s the store you will work in. I’m the manager of the store at Ninety-third and Broadway.” She paused, and added, “Do you have a problem with that?”
Once again, the threatening tone. Yes or no? She had other people to speak to and was eager to complete this call. I could sense she was not enjoying this job offer.
“No problem,” I hastened to assure her. “I’ll be there tomorrow, and on time.”
I sounded—even to myself—like an old guy speaking like a new kid at school. How embarrassing!
“If you want to work, wear black pants, black shoes, and a white shirt. Okay?”
“Okay,” I answered.
She hung up. She did not even say good-bye.
Shit! That little call made me feel really depressed. In the last few weeks, as the reality of my hard life grew clear to me, to keep depression from overwhelming me I grasped at straws—any signs that I might have a chance to maintain my position at the top of American society rather than drop so precipitously to the bottom rungs. Through these days of waiting for Crystal to call, the prospect of working at Starbucks humiliated me, but I told myself at least I’d be working in the neighborhood I had grown up in. A nice neighborhood. A location that would help me in my transition from a member of the Ruling Class to a member of the Serving Class. In the midst of my obvious, impossible-to-deny fall from financial and social heights, Seventy-eighth Street was a comforting place to be.
I had never even been to Ninety-third Street and Broadway—wherever the hell that was. My policy in New York City was never to go above East Ninetieth Street or below Grand Central. Now I was going to be working in what I envisioned could be a very dangerous neighborhood. It was certainly far from the Upper East Side, where I felt at home.
And I also didn’t like Crystal’s attitude toward me. She acted as though I were some dummy. I felt how unfair she was being. Then I remembered with remorse that I had treated a young African-American woman who had once worked for me at JWT with exactly the same kind of dismissive attitude. Jennifer Walsh was part of a big push we made in the 1970s to hire minorities. It was our token—and short-lived—effort at diversity.
Simply because she was part of this minority-hiring initiative, Jennifer was suspect to me. I was supposed to be her mentor. Yet, until that moment in Grand Central after talking to Crystal, I had never experienced what it was like to be so casually dissed because of my different background. I realized with a sinking heart how casually prejudiced of anyone different I had been in my reactions at JWT. At the agency, we liked the fact that most of us had gone to Ivy League schools. We thought we were the elite of the advertising business. We all approached the idea of hiring anyone who hadn’t gone to the crème de la crème of universities as lowering the status of our club—and that included many in the minority-hiring initiative.
Jennifer was nice, but she had graduated from some minor junior college with a two-year degree, and I never took her career at JWT seriously. I had told her to read ads for several weeks, not even to try to write one. Then I had given her a newspaper ad to write for Ford. Her very first ad.
Jennifer came into my office. It was clear that she was scared, even petrified, as she approached my big desk. Which made me feel that she was wrong for JWT; we had to project self-confidence to our clients. I blamed Jennifer for being insecure in this new circumstance. When I read her draft of an ad, I noticed that she had copied a whole paragraph from some other Ford ad I had given her to read. This was a form of plagiarism that we really hated at JWT. Perhaps because we were called copywriters, we could not stand anyone who was accused of actually copying someone else’s work. Jennifer had just committed an unpardonable corporate sin. At least as far as I saw it.
Thinking back, I realize that she might not have known that this was against policy, and I certainly didn’t point it out to her then. I literally did not give her error a second thought. Her stupid mistake gave me the excuse I needed. I went to management and told them that Jennifer might make a great secretary someday, but she did not “have what it takes” to master the higher art of advertising. I had no time for her, or the idea of diversity.
I realized with a kind of horror now, recovering from Crystal’s casual handling of a job opportunity that meant so much to me, how casually cruel I had been in “helping” Jennifer. I had been a classic hypocritical member of an old boys’ club, congratulating myself for my belief in minority advancement in the abstract, while doing everything possible in the practical world of the workplace—which I controlled—to make such opportunity impossible. I had consciously or unconsciously derailed Jennifer’s attempt to penetrate my little world just because she was an African-American without the education or experience that mattered to me.
Jennifer had been moved into some clerical job in Personnel, and had gone from my mind until this very moment. Now I felt terrible. I imagined Crystal thought