Dot Complicated: Untangling Our Wired Lives Read Free Page B

Thompson advertising agency and was going to recommend me for an interview. It was really sweet; my parents, both doctors, clearly wanted to help me with my desired career path, but they had no direct connections whatsoever to marketing or advertising. Still, they were eager and excited to be able to help in any way possible.
    A few weeks later, I walked into J. Walter Thompson and greeted my interviewer with a firm handshake and the necessary amount of confident yet friendly eye contact.
    My interviewer beamed at me. “You’ve come highly recommended,” he said.
    I beamed back. And I was just starting to feel assured of success when I read upside down the Post-it note attached to my résumé lying on the table. “Dentist’s kid. Courtesy interview. Thanks!”
    I didn’t get the job.
    Several unanswered résumés later, I landed an interview for the data and statistics team at Ogilvy & Mather, a Manhattan advertising firm. Yes, I know what I just said about statistics. But I did love acting, and I figured maybe I could carry off a convincing impression of an undiscovered prodigy in mathematics.
    Needless to say, I completely bombed the interview.
    Questioning complete, I began gathering myself to leave. As I headed for the door, a friendly looking man appeared in the doorway. It was the hiring manager for the entry-level program.
    “Well, Randi,” he said. “Clearly your passion isn’t statistics.”
    I decided to abandon my Oscar-worthy performance and murmured my agreement.
    “But,” he continued, “you seem creative. A position recently opened up in the client and creative side. Let me just make a few phone calls.” A few more interviews, and a few days later, it was official. I had a job.
    I had envisioned myself taking a few weeks off between graduating and starting a job, but when Ogilvy called, asking if I could start immediately, I didn’t argue. The Monday after graduation, I started working.
    At first, I lived at home and commuted to work on the train. It was surprisingly fun and nice being back with my parents and my youngest sister, who was still in high school. But the long commute quickly started to wear on me. Besides, I was eager to start my new life in the city. After a few months of saving up as much money as I could, I decided it was time to move to Manhattan. I was ready for a new and glamorous adventure.
    At Ogilvy, I was placed on a fairly new team called “interactive and digital media.” Of course, I had imagined myself in the far more exciting surroundings of TV sets and magazine photo shoots. Later, in retrospect, it turned out to be a hugely fortuitous placement. As the power of the Internet grew, my team and my responsibilities grew exponentially, while my friends who had been staffed in the more glamorous jobs were still going on coffee runs. But at the time, I didn’t realize how lucky I was.
    It was also clear that this was not the creative role I had hoped for. The days were long and mostly spent photocopying, binder filling, three-hole punching, staple removing, and spell-checking memos drafted in legalese.
    Even worse, I had a mean boss. She consistently referred to me as “her project” and would do bafflingly cruel things. Once she invited me to give a big presentation to the department head at 2:30 P.M. the following day. I was so excited. Now was my chance to shine! I stayed up late that night practicing my presentation. The next day, she showed up at my desk ten minutes before the meeting.
    “Randi, where have you been? The meeting started twenty minutes ago!”
    She had moved the meeting and told everyone except me, giving her a chance to reprimand me for being late and irresponsible in front of the department head and bolster her tough-as-nails image. It was the most humiliating experience of my life. (Tip: If you hide in a restroom stall, you can muffle a quiet cry with a courtesy flush and no one’s the wiser.)
    But I do have her to thank for my Naked