The Best Intentions

A few months ago I was asked by an debatably respected website for women to pen a "career advice" column. I was as surprised as anyone. Serisouly, I get paid shit. Anyway, the first topic was "Workplace Fuckups". I wrote a total of three pieces. The first was turned down. The second was just bad. The third was dropped into the abyss of the Internet and I have no idea what will happen with it. But, I still stand by it. So, for the loyal readers of Apartment 3R (all five of you. Right?) Here it is : A BusinessWomen Special. For Business Women: On the Job, Fucking Things Up


Jerome Kerviel is a former SocGen (French stock market) trader who, in January 2008, committed possibly the largest fraud in the history of banking. Basically, he started making fictitious trades, first very small and unnoticeable and then big and, apparently, very noticeable. He cost the market 40 billion dollars, the biggest loss in the financial world since the September 11th attacks.

Several things are interesting about Jerome. His personality. He is described as a very unassuming man. He was a computer whiz, quietly handsome, well remunerated and by all appearances seemed to have a long, steady career ahead of him. Some people said that he was a scapegoat, practically blameless, and whatever had happened under his watch was simply a mistake. Others said that he was back-room genius, a scam-artist professional, an expert locksmith who could not help but use his expertise to openly rob people blind.

What makes a story like this so delicious to me is that don’t you kind of get it? Don’t you kind of understand the impulse to fuck things up so terribly at work that when you make some hapless mistake, deep down, even you wonder if it might be intentional? It’s like what cutters do when they scrape themselves silly. They do it to feel alive.

Lately, I’ve been cataloging my own mistakes. I’m not too surprised to learn that they are frequent. Part of the reason for this, I think, is that I am very accountable. At least that is what they say on my performance reviews. I admit to them almost right away.

Oh me! It’s me! Me over here! I’m the one who misfiled the million dollar contract/leaked the top secret information to press/mistyped a number resulting in a myriad of excruciating conversations with people who thought they would now be rich.

Several women I spoke to agree with me. Everyone seems to be extremely good at admitting their mistakes. Guess who still won’t? Jerome Kerviel and oh my god, I’m sure that list is long. It is also pretty much understood that Kerviel could not have done this alone. He had someone to help.

It all makes me think about men and women and the mistakes we make. Witness this, in amplified form, at the now-legendary Christmas Party of 2005. My company had had a very good year. 2004 has been scary, our profit margins were in the toilet, and then, almost miraculously we turned it around. The graph titled upwards, steeply, and we were all getting bonus. The holiday season rolled around and our notoriously frugal corporate parents decided to splurge. A club was rented, sushi platters were brought out and every member of the company, from the highest to the lowest, was given full access to a complete and absolutely dazzling open bar. I remember walking into the brightly lit up scene, waiters were passing around unnamable things on sticks, the grumpy, dowdy secretaries had put on sparkly shirts, the mailroom guys were grinning, and the mighty and intimidating wove their way through the crowd, pumping everyone with handshakes. It was almost charming. Like some member of a fascist regime, I can remember actually swelling with pride. These people were my people, they are complicated and fascinating and we spend each and every day together working towards a common goal, a common good. The music played, people ate and talked and they drank. Oh, how they drank.

Unsurprisgly, this glowing moment soon devolved into a shit show of epic proporitions. Goodwill was tossed out the window, restraint slipped out the back door and tact took a permanent smoking break. Over the course of three or four hours, toxic amounts of alcohol amplified every petty argument, brought up old, contemptuous histories and emboldened the meek to finally, finally take matters into their own hands. A girl I hardly knew grabbed me by the shoulders and screamed at me that I was standoffish and mean and she just knew I was conniving to get every man in the office to bend to my will.

Rank and file, humiliation knew no bounds. My cheek was wet with the slobber of the CFO. A high-ranking member of the executive board whispered to me looking to set up his own shop. Affairs were revealed, affairs began. Hardly an innocent myself, I noticed a married member of the art department eyeing me sideways in line for the bathroom. I pounced. I have no excuse except for experiencing some unrestrained, wild joy at hearing Queen begin to play and in those moments, propriety vanishes. (Yeah. Also. My Queen phase was about 15 years too late). After the club kicked us out, everyone went to a bar where the bacchanal continued, unabated, until the wee hours.

It’s a fucking miracle that nobody died.

Then, it was the next morning. We had to go back. The sun rose boldly on our shame and the whole building seem to yawn in response. Very few people called in sick. That would too obvious, it was a matter of pride, and besides we weren’t that drunk and 3 AM wasn’t that late. As everyone sat limply at their computers, I began to notice the girls of the office skulk down the hallways, lean into doorways and balance themselves in cubicles. They were apologizing. Apologizing profusely. Apologizing all OVER the place. They apologized for their kick lines, their wayward vomit, secret confessions or inserting their wagging tongues down every willing throat.

My office then had about a 40/50 ration of males to females. However, in retrospect, I can’t help but think that even in places where our presence is dominant, the attitude is not. Women, I find, work very hard to squeeze themselves into a model of working life that is, in reality, very male. So when we bring more female attributes to this model-built-for-male, sometimes, things don’t work right. Every single guy in that office, no matter the magnitudes of their sins, sat at their desks, sipped their coffee and then went out at lunch to rehash the evening with each other. They felt fine.

The girls paired off in two’s or three’s. We drew a line in the sand and in the end, as conscious as we were of our indiscretions, we were even more conscious of each others. Who was the bigger mess, the bigger whore, the one msot certain to feel some repruscussions from their stupidity and lapses in judgement. There was no camaraderie, no shared sense of what was. We lashed ourselves in silence, quietly convinced that whatever we had built for ourselves, would come crumbling down like a house of cards. We probably felt the type of shame that should only be reserved for the likes of Lynddie England (and, face it, only a few of us will ever even be faced with an opportunity to strip naked, bind and gag war prisoners. You know, glass houses. ) and look at how she was dragged over the coals and denigrated so thoroughly for playing her own (yes, entirely disgusting) part in the boys club.

There is no girls club. And, trust me, if there were a girls club, I’d be the last one to join. God knows it would take three lunches before someone would start to talk about Pink Lady jackets or something and um, that would really undermine every female cause ever thought of, okay?

It is worthy to rail against the status quo, to fight for fair maternity leave and equal pay and workplaces free of discrimination and blatant sexual harassment. In the meantime, though, and in workplaces everywhere, we keep squeezing ourselves into models and into ways of life that don’t even work for us. And as we try to get comfortable and as we lift up our leg, or put our hand behind our ears to make for some more room for ourselves, look at what you really might be fucking up. Or fucking over. Not your job. The girl next to you, smushed helplessly to the side , and about to break apart.