by Kim Ross
Maxed Out
Kim Ross
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Contents
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
EPILOGUE
1
We snagged Jeremy from some big magazine in LA, or so my boss tells me. He’s got enough credentials to sink a small ship and he comes so highly recommended that I need supplemental oxygen whenever anyone brings him up. Based on the level of hype he’s generated, he’s been writing since he was conceived and every single living organism on Earth reads his articles, constantly, generating a stream of ad revenue rivaling the combined economies of Europe.
Or so you’d think. When I sneak into Phil’s office on his lunch break and look up his resume I’m honestly not impressed – sure, his last employer was pretty big, but he doesn’t cite any specific work he did there as exemplary, and the fact that he isn’t employed there any longer speaks to the quality of product he’s been putting out. His references are okay, sure, but his employment record before he started working in LA two years ago was little local rags, hardly worth mentioning. There’s some samples of articles he’s done attached. They don’t seem amazing. To be fair, I can’t really do more than skim right now, since Phil’s my boss and I have no idea how long he’ll be out, but nothing jumps at me in the first few paragraphs as ‘amazing writing’ or ‘outstanding journalism’ or anything.
I don’t even know why we’re hiring him. Journalism is a dying profession and we’ve got too many cooks sinking the Bugle as it is. When I mentioned this to Renee last Thursday she gave some technical speech about man-months that I tried to repeat to Phil to no avail. We’re stuck with the new hire whether I like it or not, and it’s going to be up to me to train him and integrate him into the team. While being responsible for my normal workload, of course. Why would I get time to perform my extra duties? Jeremy’s going to contribute, after all.
He arrives on Tuesday. It’s easy to miss comings and goings in the chaos of the newsroom but I’ve been dreading this for long enough that my body is attuned to the faint rumble of the elevator crank, my teeth on edge every time the doors open with that soft chime, so easily picked out against the din of a thousand keyboards and conversations and the constant hum of the press from downstairs, at least when you’re Jeanine and your desk is right next to the elevator. I generally enjoy the kind of forced interaction this provides, injecting an often needed outside influence to whatever I’m working on, but not now. I can’t even be nice when Jon or Susan or Anthony says hello when they come in, the same way they do every day. It doesn’t matter that those doors will open probably a hundred times today and that ninety nine of those times people that I like will come out. That one time is spoiling it for everyone.
I almost expect his arrival to feel like a weight off my back, like I’m a deep sea diver coming up after a long expedition or something. The wait is over. I can breathe normally; get all that nitrogen back in my system. This doesn’t happen, of course. Seeing him walk out onto the floor with Phil instead triggers a sinking feeling, closing in and locking around me with its inevitability. I’m going to be stuck doing this guy’s work in addition to my own for a month, and there’s no way of getting out of it.
Phil gives him a quick tour, giving me time to scope him out. He’s more Clark Kent than Superman, 6’3 or so with a thin, wiry build, thick framed hipster glasses and mousy brown hair moussed into a part that wouldn’t have looked out of place in It’s a Wonderful Life. Actually, scratch that. Kent was still played by Chris Reeve and most modern artists have been sure to portray Kent with arms the size of tree trunks. Jeremy’s dressed professionally in a shirt and slacks so there could be muscles hiding somewhere, but from what I can gather he’d have a hard time pulling off the lean build of Peter Parker.
Something about him defies any such comparison. Maybe it’s the innocent expression of curiosity and wonder on his face as he’s lead around by Phil, like he’s a Kansas farmboy that’s never seen a newsroom before. Maybe it’s his face, classically proportioned and topped with that ridiculous 1940’s haircut – if he took off his glasses he could maybe resemble the man of steel for a picture, but you’d have to photoshop his neck to be about twice as wide. Still, he’s got the jaw and cheekbones and cold blue eyes for it, and the hair would add a sort of retro look that you could enhance with a bit of grain and posterization –
I resist the sudden temptation to find his facebook pic and perform such a transformation. My life is about to be turned upside down by this guy. I don’t want to have a shot of his face on my desktop when he arrives to ruin everything I’ve worked for here.
I’m doing a good enough job of that on my own. Phil asked me to write an article about some Korean band yesterday in addition to my normal column and I haven’t even started. He gave me a week, sure, but he said that they’ve been getting big online and everyone else’s coverage has sucked so it’s up to me to rectify this situation and promote good ‘ol investigative journalism in the U S of A. Haven’t even looked up their name (I’ve got it written down somewhere, I think). Now that new kid’s here to occupy all of my time, I’ll get even less done.
They finish their tour. I can’t imagine what took them so long. The newsroom is just a nest of cubicles and computers, arranged in some haphazard way that must have made sense to someone somewhere but sure as hell not someone who’s ever worked at a newspaper, ever. The Bugle is pretty big. We’ve got maybe thirty cubicles (or ‘battle stations’ as Phil calls them) on this floor and a few offices around the edges for the more senior staff. There’s a few more upstairs with the copy staff and layout guys but the bulk of content creation happens here, on this floor, in the noisiest manner possible. I can’t imagine what people did for phone interviews before they could take their cellphones into the bathroom or outside or whatever.
I was hoping that Jeremy being assigned to me meant that I was senior enough to get an office. I even asked Phil point blank about it. Nope. I get to set an example for new guy from my shitty little cubicle, acoustic center of the forest of noise. I tried upgrading, calling the newsroom ‘Noisia’ in my head for a while, like it was a country that measured its GDP in decibels, but when I pitched the idea to Renee she just laughed at me for like ten minutes and wouldn’t tell me why so I dropped it. Now we’re back to the baseline ‘forest of noise’ metaphor. Boring but accurate. Kinda like the speech Phil is giving Jeremy right now.
They reach my desk. Phil introduces us. I’m a senior entertainment columnist, but you would never believe it from the way he reads my job title and I’m not about to correct my boss in front of him in an effort to look less petty in front of the new guy, however manly his jaw might be.
God damn it is manly, though.
“Jeanine?” Phil says.
“Yes?” I say.
“I asked if you had anything that you wanted to know before I leave the two of you alone.”
“Oh.” I must’ve zoned out for a minute. “What are his duties going to be?” I ask.
“He’s just going to help you for the next week or so,” Phil says. “I’m expecting an extra article or two out of the both of you, mind you, but there’s no specific assignment for him yet. I don’t want to work you too hard.”
“Oh,” I say again. This almost sounds reasonable.
“I expect him to be mostly self-sufficient by the end of the week. You’ll be accountable for his ability to contribute after that.”
I can only hope that Phil is less stubborn than usual on this one.
2
Phil leaves and I’m alone with Jeremy, or at least as alone as we’re going to get in this sea of people. I stare resentfully at his backside, fuming inside that I’ve managed to let myself get saddled with this burden. I’ll deal with it, I’m sure. That doesn’t mean it’s going to be fun or easy.
“Tell me about yourself,” Jeremy says.
“What?”
“If we’re going to be working together I should know a little about you,” he says.
“It’s just a week,” I say. Hopefully less. All I have to do is find some fatal flaw and bid good riddance to Mr. Kent here.
“Yes, but journalism is the most personal profession,” he says. “How are you supposed to present an objective viewpoint if you don’t thoroughly understand yourself? If we’re working together, we’ll have to compensate for both of our biases. We can only do this through sharing.”
This is the biggest load of shit I have ever heard. “Objective journalism is physically impossible,” I start. “The act of observation in and of itself changes –“
I had a speech prepared about Jane Goodall and quantum mechanics and certain dead Germans but it falls off of my tongue when I realize what Jeremy is offering me. He’s suggesting that we try to achieve this ridiculous ideal by sharing ourselves with each other, by being open and honest and talking about our lives and experience and our lack of qualifications for the jobs that we were just hired for.
He’s offering me kryptonite.
“I’m 27,” I say. “I live with my boyfriend in Point Loma. We’ve been together for a year and a half. I went to –“
“Don’t just give me superficial stuff,” Jeremy says. “Tell me who you are.”
This might be harder than I thought. “I’m not sure what you mean,” I say. “Maybe you should go first?”
He shakes his head. “No, then you’d just model your answer after mine and it wouldn’t be honest. People are different. What I think is important about me might not be very important about you. When you think of yourself, what’s the first attribute that comes to mind?”
I normally think positively about myself. I’d be hard pressed to come up with a single word that best describes me. If I had to name a few, I’d probably go with honesty, loyalty , fun, kindness, and wearing giant hats. The problem is, I’m not exhibiting any of those values right now. I’m trying to go behind a co-worker’s back to prove to my boss that that co-worker doesn’t deserve his job.
This is stupid. I don’t need to be doing this. I’m just resentful of the extra work that I’m going to have to put in to support a decision Phil made that I don’t agree with. My real issue is that Phil doesn’t seem to value my input as much as I think he should. Proving that Jeremy is unqualified would allow me to say ‘I told you so’ and might make him value my advice more in the future, but it’s not a very good way of handling the core conflict here. My problem is with Phil. I shouldn’t need to trash the reputation of a third party to solve that problem.
“I don’t know,” I say. I don’t know how I ever consider myself any of the things I listed earlier, considering how close I was to trying to ruin Jeremy’s career.
“Sure you do,” Jeremy says. “You just don’t want to tell me for some reason – maybe you don’t want to tell yourself. Can you tell me the reason?”
“I don’t want to be wrong,” I say.
Jeremy nods. “So you value moderation,” he says.
“What?” I say. I do nothing of that sort. I’m probably the most impulsive person I know.
“But you don’t want to risk angering me later if I catch you in a lie. You realize that this is important to me so you’re treating it with respect, even though you don’t agree. This tells me a lot – you respect opinions you disagree with, or more importantly other people in general, and you’re also not interested in taking the easy way out. You’re willing to have a longer conversation and wait and see where it ends up.”
“I don’t see how you get moderation from all that,” I say. It sounds nice, though. I’ll have to tell Max when I get home, tell him he doesn’t give me enough credit.
“Respect, moderation and patience are all the same thing,” Jeremy says. “If you’re moderate about something, that means that you respect all parties involved enough to be patient with it. If you’re patient with something, that means you respect it enough to give it the time it deserves rather than whatever’s convenient for you.”
“So what about you, then?” I say. “You’ve discovered I’m Aesop’s tortoise. Who are you?”
I think I know the answer to this. His line of questioning has clicked with something I saw in his resume. Jeremy thinks he has everything figured out. Not in your typical know-it-all fashion, where he’s ready to correct you about something you’ve been doing for years on his first day (although he just did that) but in a more relaxed, confident manner. He’s willing to let other people go on being wrong if they want to. Jeremy just ‘knows’ that he’s an expert at everything – journalism, psychology, people, you name it.
“I’m too self-confident for my own good,” Jeremy says. I can’t tell whether this is a circular statement or not.
“If you know this why don’t you stop?” I ask.
“It’s hard to back down when you know something is right,” he says. “I’ve learned that I have to do it strategically sometimes in order to control what other people think of me but it’s still difficult.”
“Like what?” I say. “Give me an example.” I know what he means, though: he seems like an asshole already. I still have to learn to work with him.
He scratches his head for a second before he comes up with one. “Your boss, for example. Our boss. When he assigned me to work with you for a week. The Bugle is being rendered more and more obsolete every day. We can’t afford to have excess staff – in fact, I read that you guys had some pretty big layoffs last month. He must have hired me for a specific reason. Having me just help you with your job for a week is a complete waste, since I’m just going to be doing that specific thing anyway, unless…”
Unless he’s been hired to replace me.
He stops, smiling. “There, I just did it again,” he says. “I didn’t tell any of that to Phil because he would’ve assumed I couldn’t know very much about your needs or finances or motivations since I’ve been here less than an hour when actually it’s the opposite. I’m a journalist and I’ve been here almost an hour. It’s my job to know almost everything about this place. I’ve been looking at everything – really looking, not just glancing about but trying to absorb and understand every detail. In addition, I’ve done my homework. I read everything I could about this place online when I applied and then I went back and did it again when I got the job. Most people don’t pay attention to details. I do. As a result, I probably know more about this place than Phil.”
“So you’re a regular Sherlock Holmes?” I say.
Jeremy shakes his head. “No. I just know a lot about newspapers. I couldn’t tell you very much if this was a body shop or a supermarket, for example. I’d notice a lot of things, sure, but I wouldn’t know which things mattered or what they meant. I’m also not addicted to narcotics.”
“So what does this bring out in your stories?” I ask. I’m a bit curious about his methodology in trying to be unbiased, even if I disagree with the premise. I generally try to do the opposite: I try to make my spin as obvious and heavy as possible, but I do write an editorial column primarily. No matter
what I like to tell people, it’s possible to be relatively neutral when discussing things like facts. Math facts. Really basic math facts.
“I tend to make up a story independent of the facts and try to push it using whatever’s convenient,” Jeremy says. “I’m too confident in my own ability to guess what’s going on. When I’m wrong, even if there’s overwhelming evidence countering my story, I’ll try to pick out the bits that let me stick to it. In order to stop this I just run my notes by a colleague and get their perspective before I finish my articles. If they disagree with my views on the big picture, I’ll change things before I submit for publication.”
I do the same thing, I realize. In my head, I’m trying to take all of these little things and use them to support my theory that Jeremy’s an asshole, that I hate working with him and that he’s incompetent. If I take a step back and listen he’s just said that people are irritated by his confidence (which is true, it’s working on me) and that he enjoys peer review of his ideas. Not exactly incompetent asshole exclusive stuff. No matter how hard I try, though, I can’t like the guy, which is weird because he’d totally be my type if I was still on the market. Probably. He’s the polar opposite of Max: nerdy instead of athletic, slim instead of muscular, classically beautiful instead of ruggedly handsome. This isn’t a bad thing -- Max has been the exception that proves the rule with regards to my taste in men – but I’ve been with him for a while and I’m starting to see the benefit of some attributes I usually don’t prefer.
I hate Jeremy because I’m envious. That has to be it. I was envious of the attention he was getting when he was being hired. I’m envious of how easily he walks in and gets on Phil’s good side and gets a cushy road to his job immediately. I had to work in the copy room for months before I got a writing gig. I’m also jealous of how he makes me feel: a weird bundle of woozy and weak in the knees blended with primal attraction with a sprinkle of loathing on top for good measure. As far as I know, I’ve never had that effect on people. When I look in the mirror, I can appreciate that I’m attractive, but I don’t go, ‘damn, I’m sexy.’ When I see Jeremy, though…
