Pink Slip Party Read Online Free Page B

never cooked, some Brie, well-past-due milk, and two jars of expensive olives.
    The cable representative finally comes on the line. He sounds bored. I wonder how much he makes. I imagine myself sitting in a drab, gray cubicle, wearing a headset, and reading customer service speeches off a laminated index card. If I had that job, I’d be tempted to put on a thick Hungarian accent, or pretend not to know English.
    The customer service representative I talk to doesn’t have that kind of creativity. He tells me that even if I offered sexual favors, he wouldn’t be able to let me keep my cable free of charge. I’ve never run into a cable guy who was willing to be bribed. I’ve been spectacularly unlucky.
    I get teary over losing HBO, but he doesn’t seem to care. I’m sure he gets that a lot — people crying over lost cable.
    “Thank you for calling,” he says, but he sounds like he doesn’t mean it.
    *   *   *
    The cable goes out almost instantaneously, and I have to go back in my closet and dig out the antenna for my television. I hook it up, and find the television awash in static. I can receive four channels — CBS, NBC, ABC, and public broadcasting — but only if I attach a frightening amount of tin foil to the edges of the antenna. I mold it into the shape of Gerald Ford, but there’s still a double picture and passing moments of static. I vow, in Scarlett O’Hara fashion, that once I find a job, I will never be without cable again. As I’m waving my fist in the air, the phone rings.
    It’s Todd.
    “I’ve emailed you a notice of a job fair. Did you get it? Are you going to go?”
    On the Todd Spaz-o-meter, a scale of one to ten, the tightness and urgency in his voice only really ranks as a three.
    “Are they going to have clowns there? And cotton candy?”
    Todd does not laugh. He is missing the humor gene. He doesn’t know what’s funny. When he’s at the movies, or in a business meeting, he hangs back and waits for other people to laugh and then he joins in. It’s very sad.
    “No, Jane. They have recruiters and HR professionals there.”
    He seriously thinks I’m unfamiliar with what a job fair is.
    “Sounds like as much fun as an undertakers’ convention.”
    “Jane. Come on. Go. You can meet me for lunch. Come on, I’ll buy.”
    I pretend I’m choking from shock. “You’ll buy? Is this the seventh sign of the apocalypse?”
    Todd is notoriously cheap, like my dad. When the bill comes he’s always struck by a sudden case of alligator arms. They’re always too short to reach the bill.
    “Very funny,” Todd says.
    This is good. I am giddy. Any time I get an excuse to leave the apartment, I feel like celebrating.
    “But,” Todd says, rather sternly into the phone. “I’ll only pay if you update your resume.”
    “Todd,” I cry, my exuberance for seeing the outside world tempered by the fact that I have to do work to earn lunch. “That’s extortion.”
    “I know you won’t do it unless you’re bribed.”
    That much is true.
    “I’ve already updated my resume,” I lie.
    “I don’t mean copying someone’s resume from Monster and passing it off as your own.”
    Damn that Todd. Smarter than he looks.
    So. The resume.
    The resume is difficult because it requires a lot of imagination, creativity, and a propensity for outrageous, ambitious lies. The bigger they are, the more believable they are. Small ones are noticed right away.
    I boot up my computer, and pull up my resume. My last job description, before Maximum Office, was technically “part-time graphic designer who answered phones.” On my resume, however, I put “Director of Graphic Marketing and Chief Communications Coordinator, Midwest Division.”
    *   *   *
    I stare at my resume and wonder what I should say about Maximum Office. My official title was Design Specialist. This sounds impressive, but “specialist” means “cheap labor with little experience.” They might as well have called me Pawn. Or