Match 1: Lol, okay. So, beat your boss at her own game.
Me: You’ve intrigued me. How so?
Match 1: Call her out on it and go to each event not as a single woman looking for love, but something more you. Be the worst date ever. Write about that.
Me: Not a bad idea. Thanks.
Match 1: Anything else happen that I can assist you with?
Me: Maybe you’re in customer service?
Match 1: No, remember I hate most people.
Me: Right.
Match 1: But I don’t hate you.
Me: Give it time, Match 1, give it time.
Match 1: Lol.
Call Gail out?Beat her at her own game? I sit back in my chair, put my fingertips over my keyboard, and start to write.
Just a few short weeks ago,the idea of me using a dating app would have been laughable. I had what I thought was a great relationship, one with an amazing guy and a glimpse of a hopeful future. But life happens, right? And just like the millions of other relationships in the history of relationships, it ended.
This is not an article about relationships, though. It’s about horrible bosses.
Horrible bosses who try to force you back into the dating scene and write articles all about it. What kind of sociopath does that? It’s one who believes the rest of humanity is some holographic simulation projected for their sole amusement.
The quicksand of a dilemma that’s been sucking at my feet is that I actually love my job. It’s got one of those cool spinning chairs, and I’ve been known to come in still dressed in my pajamas, without complaint. Hence my surrendering of self-respect and plunging myself headfirst into the disgusting cesspool of unfiltered testosterone that is online dating and single-mingle mixers.
I’m just going to be doing it my way.
As a terrible, no-good, rotten person.
Does this mean I’ll be doomed to spend the rest of my entirety alone? Maybe that’s my goal, not in the sense of ME never meeting anyone again—I’m not ready to even think about that yet, my heart is still healing and I refuse to be forced to speed its recovery— but in the sense of how awful can this get? Are there websites out there for shitty people to find other shitty people? Because I’m setting all my profiles in my boss’s likeness, making sure my creation touches upon every major facet of her truly horrible personality: meanness, manipulativeness, gold-digging, ignorance, and we’ll see what happens…
During lunch,Julia and Nate help me make the article even worse. We sit, heads close together, around a small table in the deli across the street from our office. Julia’s helped me set up all the fake profiles, and we can’t stop laughing at the plethora of poor attributes Gail’s profile offers. All of it true. It’s no wonder she hasn’t been in a relationship for years.
“I’m still going to have to write other articles about whatever mixers and parties she throws me into with Dex, but this is making it a little better.”
“What happens if she fires you for writing about her?” Nate asks, sipping at his soda.
“I’ll go to Metro. They’ve been trying to get me to write for them for years.”
Julia’s head snaps up and her eyes go wide. “You’d really leave?”
“It’s not like I could fight Gail, you know? We all kneel before her because she owns everything, but she doesn’t have the right to tell me I’m easily replaceable. Let her find out if I really am then.” I’m talking tough, but I truly am worrying over how easily replaceable I actually am with everything right now, with my job and with Dex.
“You’re not easily replaceable,” Nate says.
“Yeah, well. I am to Dex.” I want to bite my own tongue for saying that out loud right now.
Julia starts to say something, but Nate just cuts her off. “Why don’t me or Julia just come with you to all these dating events so it’s not so bad. We could buffer you from Dex so you don’t even see him, and you can write about whatever funny situations that come up with us.”
Julia nods, “That’s not a bad idea. Why didn’t we think of that before?
“I guess,” I shrug at Nate. I’m wondering if I should continue pretending to be Gail at all the events she wants me to attend. I could call everyone darling, and belittle people for breathing. I’m not sure I have that sort of meanness in me.
