Page 22 of Joey

Did I get this wrong? Did I misinterpret the climate here at Bright Berry Beach?

Then I glance to the left, the other side of the large lobby—to the people who actually work here—and decide no. I look just like them.

All these women to my right got it wrong.

So I smile as the woman in front of me slides off to the side to go join the other recruits and say, “Brooke Alder. I’m here for the—”

“Yes, I know,” the woman behind the desk snaps. She’s very young. Like… she can’t be more than twenty-two. “Do you have a résumé?”

“Yes,” I say brightly. “I do.”

She holds out her hand, frowning at me as I open up my padfolio and remove my perfectly polished history. She takes it out of my hand before I’m even really offering it and says, “Just have a seat over there. It might be a long wait. We’ve got a ton of people interested.”

“Sure,” I say, ready to give her a snappy, but professional, closing statement. But the girl behind me kinda crowds me out and the next thing I know, I’m being pushed aside.

Whatever. This is just reception. They have no influence over who gets hired. And I’m ready for this. One hundred percent on.

There are no seats. Every one of them is filled. Not that I would sit, because I’m not about to wrinkle my skirt. So I just stand up against a wall next to a girl who looks like she’s going out for the evening and not applying for a job.

She smiles at me when she notices me looking her over. “Nice outfit,” she says.

“Same,” I say, side-eyeing her back.

“Oh, here they come,” she says.

I look over to where she’s pointing and find the door to an office opening.

A woman appears, deep frown on her face. Then she quickly walks away and the man coming up behind her—big guy with a kind of football player build—says, “OK. You.” Then he points to a woman off to my left. “Let’s go.”

She gets up, takes a deep breath, and smiles at another woman who might be her friend.

“Good luck,” the friend whispers.

Then she disappears into the office.

“Another one bites the dust,” my new frenemy says.

“What do you mean?” I ask, turning to look at her.

“Obviously she’s out.”

“Oh, yeah.” I frown too. “They’re super picky then, huh?”

“Well, look around. There’s like fifty people here applying for the job and only one of us is going to get it.”

“One?” I ask. “Jesus. One?”

My new frenemy is about to say something, but the office door opens again and the girl who just went in exits. “Wow, that’s a new record.” She laughs.

“Holy shit. This is competitive.”

“Find me someone suitable!” a deep voice calls from inside the office.

I lean to the right a little, trying to see past the bulldozer dude, and catch a glimpse of a very handsome man in a light-gray suit siting at a desk.

What the hell? I’m not being discriminatory or anything, but this is a cosmetics company. And all the upper management people are female. So who is this guy doing the interviews?

“Just… get rid of the ones who aren’t a good fit,” he adds.