by Dan Conway
A few weeks later, I was invited to join Steve and a few other big shots as they traveled to our Denver division to discuss plastic bags. This was a big deal, an undeniable sign that they were grooming me for something bigger. We walked into the cavernous room where several hundred employees were already assembled and waiting for our arrival. The room broke into applause, an ode to Steve. Damn, that felt good.
On the return flight, still high from the sudden muscular liftoff of the small jet as we soared over the Rockies, I got too chatty with Steve, asking about his family and telling him about mine. Later, my manager told me I’d violated Steve’s personal space. I was mortified. The spell was broken. Safeway eventually adopted my plastic bag policy, but I never regained the confidence that showed I was ready for the big leagues. I knew another opportunity might not come along.
Refresh, refresh, refresh.
But that was a thing of the past. I’d have a fresh start. Because there was the email. Acme was going to make me an offer. I’d gotten the job.
Chapter Two
Deliverance
I heard about the Acme position from an acquaintance and had been quietly interviewing for months. He said the pay would be $250,000 salary plus bonus, restricted stock options and other benefits. I was making $130,000 at Safeway, so this was an enormous step up the economic ladder. It was also the perfect time for us to receive a windfall.
Our finances had been blowtorched by the 2008 financial crisis, and we were still struggling to recover. After Annie was born in March 2007, Eileen left her full-time gig heading up a PR agency and started a one-person consulting practice. She worked from our kitchen table in between duties at our preschool co-op. When the carnage and bank failures started in 2008, she lost half her clients overnight. One of her clients, a man in his mid-fifties, sent her a note: I’m sorry, but everything is on hold, and I’m not sure I am even going to keep my job. He didn’t.
She fought like hell to stabilize a much-smaller business amid scary news coverage and economic paranoia. Companies were hoarding money and preparing for a global depression. In that environment, which lasted for years, it was impossible to grow the business back to what we needed to be financially stable.
Eileen and I didn’t have any liquid savings. We were scraping to pay our $5,000 mortgage each month in addition to our regular bills at Target, Pizza My Heart, Pacific Gas & Electric and the like. Our cushion was the equity line of credit on our house, which we used to supplement our monthly income as needed. It was also our emergency fund if I lost my job or we were hit with some other financial catastrophe.
Then our mortgage holder, Wells Fargo, pulled our equity line of credit. They claimed our house was worth 30 percent less than it had been the day before. The housing market was in decline, thanks in no small measure to Wells Fargo’s enthusiastic participation in the subprime mortgage bubble. They justified rescinding the equity line of credit on our prime-status mortgage, and those of thousands of other homebuyers, by sending drive-by estimators all over Northern California. They zoomed by and took a few pictures, but they never knocked on any doors. The shoddy “estimates” of lower-appraised values were full of errors and template descriptions written in their corporate office.
We were able to survive by tightening our belts, holding to a budget and using credit card debt as needed. Other than visits to Eileen’s parents on the East Coast, we weren’t taking vacations. I continued driving a variety of piece-of-shit cars while Eileen drove our “good” car, a Honda Odyssey minivan.
We were still better off financially than most people in the country, and we weren’t exactly falling head-first into poverty. We were still officially upper class. But it didn’t feel that way each time we had to buy a new furnace, fix a banged-up fender or handle the other unpredictable expenses that seemed to come more frequently as our family grew.
* * *
The promise of this Acme salary stirred a theme that had been building since I entered the workforce fifteen years before. I’d get out if I could. If I somehow accumulated enough “fuck-you money”—an amount high enough to say “fuck you” to your boss on the way out the door, if you so desired—I’d take it.
I’d tried my hand at escape once before, in 1998. I left a job at PeopleSoft totally burned out at twenty-seven, resigning a few months after winning the Outstanding Contributor Award. I’d spent the previous year in my cubicle, working my ass off. I had no personal life. There was too much work to pay attention to anything else.
It was an existential crisis, at a time when I could still afford to have one.
I read the book Your Money or Your Life and was inspired by it. Co-author Joe Dominguez explained the idea, which was to establish financial independence over time by burning both ends of the candle, reducing all spending drastically, as if your life depended on it (it does, he implores) and making as much money as you could, saving nearly all of it. I decided to save all of my treasure and build up enough money to win early financial independence. I’d live a simple but free life.
Another book inspired me back then: Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. It details the story of Chris McCandless, a young man who rejects society, gives up his possessions and hitchhikes across the country to the wild Alaskan outback to make it on his own. McCandless couldn’t accept modern life. I couldn’t accept modern work. I decided to give up my apartment, sell my car and move back home with my parents.
Those who encountered McCandless on his journey remembered his small wisdoms and transcendent spirit. He donated all of the money in his bank account to OXFAM and burned the remaining cash in his wallet. During my vision quest, I berated a bank teller over a small fee and asked my father if he could please stop accidentally opening my mail, because it seemed to be happening a lot. I was twenty-eight years old.
My plan was to drastically reduce my spending and start a one-person PR consulting practice that would generate $10,000 per month or more. I’d sock it away, bite the bullet and accumulate enough so I had options for how I’d live the rest of my life.
I figured I’d eventually get a small, rent-controlled apartment in the Mission District of San Francisco and keep it for decades or move to Eureka up north, a low-cost-of-living destination full of Bay Area cast-offs I’d visited a few times. I could write for a living, start a small one-person business, or find some other way to make enough money to live frugally without having to rejoin the traditional workforce.
I consumed extreme frugality newsletters for inspiration and lifestyle ideas. The Tightwad Gazette was particularly good reading. The author was dead-set against any spending at all. She explained how one could cut out common, chronic expenses like gas bills by riding a bike to work. I followed many of her suggestions and absorbed one hundred percent of the spirit in which they were made. This was enough to make me what you might call “cheap.”
I remember shopping for a good friend’s wedding present at a brightly lit Pottery Barn in the mall, a rare shopping expedition. I blinked at the price. I could live for a month for the cost of the potpourri. The only thing left on the registry was a set of eight wine glasses, for a total cost of $95, which was more than the $80 I was willing to spend. So I only purchased seven glasses. When the bride opened my gift at the after-wedding party for close friends, she thought that Pottery Barn had screwed up until she figured out I’d only given up to my budgeted amount.
Each budget-saving task, like making your own glue with cornstarch and vinegar, was straightforward. But a lifestyle based on extreme budgeting was isolating, unless you counted the company of Mom and Dad in the next room, wondering if you might be ready to announce your mental health diagnosis.
Some people in my position might have pursued a career as a contractor, electrician, or other high-paying blue-collar job. My money-making skills outside of office work were limited.
From a young age, I knew I’d better become a college boy, or else. Growing up, my family had a cabin in Russian River in Sonoma County, which everyone
referred to as the River. It served as a training ground for me, my brother, and cousins as we learned to fix things with our hands and become capable men. At least they did. I couldn’t build a deck, fix a door, or assemble a barbecue. While the rest of them mastered the tactics of being handy and moved on to the blue-collar brain work of envisioning a new kitchen and then making it so, I was relegated to digging holes, carrying heavy things, and making a lovely lunch. I’d come home from Georgetown, where I was earning honors grades, and resume my duties as family dunce at the cabin, spreading manure for our new garden and carrying bags of cement up three flights of stairs.
During this stint of living at home, my one-person consulting practice was going well. I was making good money and socking it all away with very few expenses. Then my resolve slipped away imperceptibly. I talked to a friend who was working for an Internet company and doing just great. He’d recently gotten back from a business trip to Japan and Australia. His stock options might make him rich in a few years. He’d just had a threesome!
Ever so slightly, without thought or intention, I started to drift. My mooring had dissolved—it had been secured with sand, not cement.
Then Macromedia came calling. They wanted to hire me to be the PR Manager for Flash, their popular web graphics product. I could take the job and get my own apartment again. I’d rejoin the people I’d been traveling with my whole life. The familiar crowd. Meet some chicks. Maybe I could make it in the corporate world, after all.
So I accepted.
A few months after I started at Macromedia, I was told I’d be getting a new boss. A hotshot who’d previously headed up the Apple account at Edelman PR. She’d apparently gone to Brown. Her name was Eileen Stanley. She was my age. My ego preferred my bosses to be at least ten to fifteen years older than me.
We started working together, and it was good. She was the most productive person I’d ever encountered. She could write a whole report in a few hours and put together an international product launch plan in an evening. She was lightning smart, good with people, and not at all snotty. She was humble and nice. And attractive, with short blond hair, high cheekbones and nice legs. And she liked my jokes.
Over the wall of my cubicle, I heard Eileen talking to her mom on the phone. It sounded just like me talking to my parents.
“Ok, Mom, well, I thought you said you knew when I was landing. You don’t have to come pick me up at all if you don’t want to.”
They were bickering.
“Ok, I can’t wait to see you guys, either. But tell Dad I refuse to watch the History Channel this time.”
Then “I love you,” before saying goodbye.
Our group took a team-building trip to Disneyland. Eileen sang the “Small World” theme song in a little girl’s voice during the ride. At first I thought she was being ironic, but no—she didn’t even notice me staring. She was just enthralled with the wonder of Small World. Hilarious. Also ... adorable.
All six of us on the team headed for the Matterhorn. Back then, before Disneyland went through a sexual-harassment upgrade, riders on the Matterhorn had to straddle each other. It was like two people on a horse, except the back person’s legs wrapped all the way in front of the lead rider. It was a position you might find in a tantric sex book. Eileen and I shared a car. It was good for me. I began to desire an encounter outside of team meetings.
We’d be going back and forth on press release edits, but I kept thinking of another type of back and forth. If only we were two primates in the jungle rather than people pretending to be civilized professionals, the deed would have already been done. (I’ve always been a romantic.)
Then we went on a business trip to New York, which turned out to be close enough. We rented a car and drove to the Hamptons. We stayed at a bed-and-breakfast owned by a guy named Prince or Earl or Duke, we can never remember which, and had a hell of a good time. Soon after, I left Macromedia, erasing our dating-at-work problem.
In subsequent years, and especially after Danny was born, I temporarily abandoned the idea of retiring early by extreme budgeting or any other alternative lifestyle. Having kids changed everything. No matter how jaded or frustrated I might’ve been, the sight of my kids sleeping in their beds had a chilling effect on my existential misgivings. I really wanted them to be happy and have an excellent start to life.
Now, as I awaited my offer from Acme with Eileen by my side, twelve years after my first attempt to exit corporate America, we’d be pursuing financial independence together, although Eileen didn’t like to talk about money. If I could keep getting raises and stock options, we could pile up cash to do something outside of the corporate grind in the years ahead.
During this period, I’d been able to control my drinking. Although I was often the drunkest person at any party, the home and work pressures were proving to be enough to keep me in line. Now that we wouldn’t have to worry about money, things were looking up. In addition to saving for early retirement, perhaps we’d take a few luxurious trips and buy “timepieces.” We’d definitely be enjoying more locally sourced organic vegetables, grass-fed beef, and freshly ground, individually pressed coffee.
We’d be like the parents of my rich-kid friends growing up, the ones with cushy jobs in corporate America rather than in public education, like my dad, or part-time retail, like my mom. These parents bought their kids golf and tennis lessons and dropped them off at Outward Bound camp in their BMWs. I was lucky to go to Benihana at birthday time.
It wasn’t just the money. With this Acme job, I hoped to graduate and escape the overcrowded herd of mid-level staffers that populate LinkedIn. Many smart and deserving people never climb any higher up the pyramid. They toil away in the middle ranks their whole careers, losing hair and adding waist while holding onto that part of their youth that allows them to gaze admiringly into the eyes of a manager ten years their junior. They never get the chance to go to Italy on vacation, develop their own “management style,” or shop at the fancy boutique t-shirt store on Burlingame Avenue. They never get to be cool.
At past jobs, I’d always been the one briefing more senior people, writing their messaging, and wracking my brain to come up with insights for their consideration before important meetings. Now I’d be the one getting briefed. I no longer had to worry about the knock on the door. I’d be the one knocking.
I felt dignified and gangster. Also scared shitless.
Acme is one of the largest companies in America. When I joined in 2010, there were more than two hundred thousand employees in more than a dozen countries. This corporate behemoth was comprised of colossal business units across global geographies and operated more than two thousand retail stores in the United States. I’d be an executive, with a full team and a substantial salary.
I’d hit the big time.
***
I was told my offer letter was working its way through the system and would come any day. I drifted through my days at Safeway like a cadaver, every ounce of motivation and work ethic drained since the moment I knew I was leaving.
The letter came, offering a $150,000 salary, modest options, and a bonus if all targets were met. The salary represented a 15 percent raise over Safeway. But they’d promised $250,000, a 92 percent raise!
Except they hadn’t promised me anything. The guy who turned me onto the job had no actual knowledge of the salary. He guessed wrong, trying to make things sound as good as possible.
To the vast majority of people in this country, a salary of $150,000 is tremendous. But in the Bay Area, with a mortgage on a million-dollar house, three kids, and the expenses of an upper middle-class life (gym, summer camps, vacations), that salary wouldn’t erase our money worries. We’d still be trying to figure out how to pay for three college educations and fund our retirement. It was more money than I was making, but it wouldn’t change our lives like a glorious $120,000 salary bump.
Sometimes people only get one big break in their careers, when the stars align and a sweet job with long-term fin
ancial security falls into their laps. This was my shot. The jackpot had revealed itself, and I could climb the corporate ranks after years of toil. I was prepared to buckle down and work my ass off, sell my soul, sacrifice every passion until retirement, which would hopefully come sooner rather than later.
But I wanted to be compensated accordingly. Even before I started, I knew this post would come with grand headaches, difficulties, and frustrations. As a vice president at Acme, I’d be in charge of the communications and political strategy for the company’s biggest market. I’d have a multimillion-dollar budget and manage five employees, a handful of contractors, and three public relations agencies. I’d be the lead political counselor to the top Acme executives in the state. It was a big-time job, with big-time pressures and the distinct possibility of failure. I was furious that I wasn’t being offered a big-time salary. I tried to negotiate. They wouldn’t budge a dollar.
The delicate dance between company and prospective hire, which is supposed to culminate in big smiles, a signed job acceptance letter, and introductions all around, was breaking down.
My future bosses were surprised by my pushback and clearly didn’t appreciate it. They said, “This always happens with Californians!”
Yes, I thought. I apologize for living where a three-bedroom home costs more than four goats and a half-cup of Grandma Opie’s teeth. Living in the Bay Area was expensive, and I expected Acme to factor that into their calculations. From their perspective, I was shouting and pounding my high chair because I hadn’t received enough Grey Poupon—and it smelled like I had a dirty diaper.
My hiring manager bit her tongue and had me call an HR representative to continue the dialogue.
This was my first experience with a concept called Acme Unified. Acme is a massive spaceship, with rows of cubicles on various decks devoted to handling specific functions. In this case, my compensation specialist was charged with explaining the salary package. Unfortunately, Employee 1342 in his Denver cubicle didn’t know much about the job offer, and he couldn’t explain how the restricted stock program worked. He was cranky as hell.
