License to Shop (2 page)

“
Molly Harbison. I’m here
to see Henriette Stubbs,” I said, proud of the confident timbre of
my voice. “I have an interview.”

“
Please have a seat. I’ll
let her know you’ve arrived,” the admin said, equally confidently.
I squashed down my astonishment at how young she looked. She seemed
more of a contemporary with the students than the staff. I’d been
almost that young, too, fifteen years ago, I reminded myself.
Instead of standing up and walking back to the closed office door
with Henriette Stubbs’ name on it, she tapped a quick message on
the keyboard of her computer.

I surveyed the sad seating
choices for my wait. An uncomfortable pair of plastic chairs, and a
beat up love seat that was half taken up with a basket of…I moved
closer…yep, a mother dog with a squirming litter of puppies. There
was a handmade sign on the basket. FOR SALE. $25 OBO. I backed away
from the mama dog’s sad eyes and took one of the plastic chairs.
Discomfort over dog hair any day, that’s my motto.

The admin’s computer
dinged to tell her she had an urgent message and two seconds later
she said, “Dr. Stubbs will be a few minutes late.”

“
Thank you for letting me
know.” As the minutes ticked by, marked by a large round analog
clock on the wall over the admin’s head, I could feel the
confidence seeping out of me like air out of a balloon. I tried to
hold it in as best I could, by focusing on how I’d evaluate this
office if I had to do a mystery shop on it.

First, Dr. Stubbs
definitely got points off for making me wait. Five minutes was
understandable, but fifteen meant she was either disorganized or
disdainful of other people’s time. Did I really want to work for a
boss like that?

I knew what Dierdre would
say. “Of course, Molly. You can show her how to run her office
properly, by example. She’ll appreciate you. You’ll get a raise, a
promotion, and soon you’ll be a superstar, just as you deserve.”
Dierdre, the Dean’s wife, heart surgeon, and general have-it-all
role model for women whose husbands are looking for an appointment
as assistant dean, could put a positive spin on
anything.

I made a short list of
changes this office would need me to spearhead, beginning with new
chairs to wait in and ending with creating a pup-free zone, and
then stopped. Spearheading change was something easier to say, than
to do, unless you were a Dierdre. Maybe I should aim for keeping my
head down, doing my job well, and leaving the rest until I had
managed to make it through my probationary period.

The admin was clearly a
temp, given the way she answered the phone. “Good morning,
Athlet…ummm, I mean, Admissions Office.” That made me feel slightly
less like a dinosaur. She was probably a student. She had the lithe
slim build of a teenager, wore a nose ring, and had a pretty little
butterfly tattooed on her inner wrist.

As I sat there, trying not
to feel self conscious, a young woman in jeans and pink flip flops
entered the office in a rush. “Hey, did I leave my phone here by
any chance? The case is pink, with blue flowers?” She looked too
young to be a student, but not by much. Or else I was just getting
so old everyone looked like they should be in high school to
me.

The admin shook her head.
“Haven’t seen a phone, I’m sorry. You were on the morning tour of
the campus, right? Could you have left it in the Student
Center?”

The girl, who I was
relieved to learn was actually high-school-age, looked crushed. “I
checked. They didn’t have it.”

“
Did you try Security?
They have a Lost and Found for anything on campus.”

“
Thanks, I will. My dad
will be so mad at me if I lost another phone. Last time I lost my
phone, the person got into my bank account and cleaned me
out.”

“
When you find it, you
should consider locking it.”

She shrugged. “It wasn’t
that big a deal. The bank gave me my money back because I wasn’t
the one who had taken it out. My dad yelled a little, but I’m used
to that.”

“
Identity theft is no
joke,” the admin grumbled after the girl had bounced out of the
office, headed for Security and Lost and Found.

“
I agree.” I made myself
enter all my passwords every time I needed them. It was a pain, but
I couldn’t afford to find out that my bank account had been
appropriated by some identity thief. Although anyone who wanted to
steal my identity would be a pretty poor identity thief, given my
bank balance on any given day.

The admin looked at me
guiltily for a moment, as if she had forgotten I was there. Then
she had several more text message exchanges with her boss, given
the way she kept looking at me after every ding. She didn’t say
anything to me about the estimated arrival of Dr. Henriette
Stubbs.

I decided to put my
shopper senses on high alert and see what she knew about the
Admissions office. Temps, by their very nature, were not loyal to
the boss, so I could possibly learn something that would help me in
the interview. “Do you like working here?”

She shrugged. “I just
started this job two weeks ago. I’m only a temp.”

Point to me for figuring
that one out.

“
I temped my way through
school at my university. Got a class a semester paid for, which
helped the pocketbook,” I confessed.

She nodded. “I get
half-tuition here. I’ll be finished my degree just about the same
time as this assignment wraps up.” She typed one more message on
her computer and then stood up to file some paperwork in the bank
of filing cabinets behind her desk.

She didn’t offer me tea,
or coffee, although I did see a nice Nespresso Virtuoline and
little glass mugs on top of the filing cabinets. Fancy.

“
Are you looking forward
to having a permanent job, after you graduate?” It wasn’t a
question that would help me ace the interview, but I was almost in
the same boat as she was. Mystery shopping was nothing more than a
series of temporary assignments, when it came right down to it.
Ultra temporary work — which had a nice ring to it, come to think
of it.

“
I’m looking forward to
not having to think tiny paycheck to tiny paycheck any longer.” She
paused and turned toward me, sharing a smile that seemed both warm
and genuine. “Of course, I should have thought of that before I
decided to be an English major.”

“
English majors can
conquer the world,” I argued, although the comment about tiny
paychecks had definitely resonated with me.

She looked at me
skeptically. “Don’t tell me. You were an English major,
too?”

I nodded. “But I minored
in business.” My mother had insisted on either business or
education. I knew I didn’t want to be a teacher and I figured
business, like English, could be useful in almost anything I
did.

She smiled. “Me, too.
Accounting minor.”

I laughed. “My minor was
marketing. I’m allergic to spreadsheets. You’ll be attractive to
employers, I guarantee you — someone who can write and handle
numbers? Awesome combination.”

Her eyes lit up.
“Marketing? Then maybe you can help me.” Her computer dinged again,
but she barely glanced at it and didn’t reply.

“
What kind of marketing
advice do you need?” I glanced at the clock. I’d been waiting for
nineteen minutes now.

She pointed to the basket
of puppies. “See those? My boss’s perfectly pedigreed dog had a
rendezvous with a mongrel and now it is my job to see all those
pups get a good home by the end of the week, or they’re off to the
pound.”

“
To the pound?” I looked
at the squirming pups. They were cute. They’d probably get adopted.
I counted. There were five.

“
Yep. Dr. Stubbs is not a
patient person.” She shook her head. “With my accounting skills, I
can count the puppies, and add up the costs of feeding and caring
for them, but my marketing skill needs some help. That sign has not
been effective. Students have cooed over the pups, but not one
wanted to buy.”

“
To be fair,” I said,
searching my rusty memory for marketing tidbits, “Your target
customer is not going to be a student who is still in sticker shock
at how much an education costs. Do dorms even allow pets? They
didn’t when I was a student.”

She pursed her lips. “No.
You’re right. I need a better plan.”

“
Why don’t you take the
cutest picture you can, and then put up flyers where the commuter
students—and maybe some staff—will see them. Like at the credit
union and maybe the commuter lounge in the student
union.”

She beamed. “That’s a
great idea.”

I was just about to offer
to take a few photos for her, a skill I had honed in my mystery
shopping jobs, when Dr. Henriette Stubbs strode into the office.
She was a tall woman, built more like a man in that
straight-waisted, broad-shouldered way that Hollywood did not often
choose for their leading ladies. She gave me a cold look, as if I
had been caught stealing paperclips and was awaiting punishment.
The look she gave the temp was much, much colder. Brrr.

“
What’s a great idea,
Kecia?” She looked between the two of us as if she suspected she
had caught us plotting a coup.

She said, “While we were
waiting for you, Molly thought of a great way for me to get the
word out about the pups. I bet we’ll have them all sold by the end
of the week.”

Henriette Stubbs looked at
me, her gaze slightly less frigid. “I hope so. Poor Sofie needs to
put this ordeal behind her. She can’t recover her figure until
those pups are gone for good.” She reached into the basket and took
the mama dog away from the pups, ignoring the soft whining of both
pups and mama. “Kecia, I have an urgent list of things for you to
do before the end of business today. Follow me.”

The temp, whose name I now
knew was Kecia, gave me a look that clearly said, “what can you
do?” and followed Dr. Henriette Stubbs into her office, clutching a
notepad. The door closed. I heard a raised voice, and —
occasionally — a quiet, muffled response of no more than one word.
Probably yes, but I couldn’t hear it, so it was only
speculation.

I took out my phone and
started the stopwatch function. Just how long was I supposed to
wait for this interview to begin? I had kids. I had a life. I had
places to be and people to see.

At last, Kecia came out,
two jackets draped over her arm, dry cleaning forms clutched in her
hand with the notepad. She waved her pretty butterfly at me, to
indicate I should enter the domain of Dr. Henriette Stubbs,
possible boss and definite stone cold bitch.

Dr. Henriette Stubbs had excellent taste. Her
office was modern and clean, without an ounce of clutter. That
suggested she was not disorganized. So being twenty minutes late
for the interview she herself had scheduled meant she intended to
show me who was boss. As if I wouldn’t have known it the moment I
laid eyes on her.

In my time as a secret
shopper, I have come across every type of boss it was possible to
be. Compassionate, autocratic, hotheaded, absentee, bat-shit crazy,
control freak, organized, disorganized, unwilling, tense, laid
back, and utterly apathetic. That meant I could put Ms. Stubbs in
her niche in the boss pantheon without needing to think too hard
about it — autocratic control-freak, no question. But it didn’t
tell me how to deal with the interview when I wanted her to hire
me.

I had brushed up on my
interview techniques, which were not that different from my mystery
shopping techniques. Smile, look people in the eye, speak clearly
and slowly, and make it more about them than about you. I’d already
practiced tapping into my inner Dierdre while I sat waiting and
losing confidence second by second.

Still, I reached in and
yanked up my mental big girl panties and managed to come up with a
smile I felt sure did not say, thanks for making me wait so long so
you could show me who was alpha dog, bitch. It wasn’t that much
different from putting on a professional face when I had to deliver
a shop report directly to the boss — my least favorite kind of
mystery shopping assignment ever.

The big difference is
that, ultimately, when you are being interviewed for a job, you
care what the interviewer thinks of you. In mystery shopping, you
don’t plan to see the manager again, that’s the nature of the
“mystery” in mystery shopping. Now you see me, now you never see me
again. In an interview, you’re trying to convince this boss they
want you to work for them, all day, every day.

Dr. Stubbs dropped Sofie
onto a plush dark blue dog bed perched on a leather chair next to
her desk, took my resume out of a neatly labeled folder that lay
centered on her very clean desktop, and indicated I should sit in
the less comfortable wooden chair directly across from her desk. I
was impressed, despite my lack of approval of her interview
methodology. Admissions was a paperwork-heavy job. To keep it in
check was a skill not to be underestimated. I couldn’t do it at
home, with only four of us to manage.

She looked at my resume
for longer than seemed necessary since I had kept it short; the
one-page-only-relevant-info-please resume that everyone seemed to
be recommending right now. She interrupted her reading to check her
phone twice, frowning at each text message. To her credit, she did
not reply to either.