Our team is hiring for a new counterpart of mine, so yesterday was my first day interviewing potential candidates to fill this new role on our team on the East Coast. When interviewing, I try to be friendly but also fairly expressionless to ensure that the candidate doesn’t know which way I am leaning. But honestly on Friday, I was so confused by the experience that I had that it took me a few hours to realize that I did not like this person at all.

The worst thing you can possibly do during an interview is not answer the questions that are asked of you. If I ask you about A, you need to answer about A. Don’t give me scenario B and then ramble on and on about how that made you look good. That’s basically what happened today. But because this candidate’s delivery was so confident, if I really weren’t listening to anything he was saying, he could easily have won me over with his level of confidence and delivery. But, I was listening, and he didn’t.

Last week during our team week, we had a “speak easy” public speaking session, where the presenter basically said that the most important part of public speaking is how you portray yourself; the content is secondary. Well, in an interview, you need to be really good at both; if your content sucks, then you suck, and we don’t want to hire you. We don’t need some arrogant bullshitter who wants to try to own the place getting hired.

Since yesterday was party night, I figured I could wear something festive that I normally would not wear. I’m generally a bit conservative at work, more than I would be with friends or family given that, well, it IS work, and I want to be taken seriously. That’s why at my last job, when a number of women at various levels would come in wearing everything from tube tops, backless tops, to halters and extremely short skirts, I always did a double-take and wondered if they thought that way of “professional” dress was a smart idea. I’m all for wearing those things at non-work settings, but work settings require some level of modesty, don’t they?

So yesterday, I wore a pleated but festive pink midi-length skirt, heels, and a black spaghetti-strapped tank top with a built-in bra. I’m obviously small-chested, and though for many years, I had insecurities about it (since so many things I wanted to wear never fit me right there, and it used to enrage me), now I embrace it and love the fact that I have a small chest; I’ll never have to worry about sagging, back pain, or whether I am exposing too much cleavage. A female colleague, who had clearly had a bit too much to drink, came over to me to compliment me on my outfit. She then said, “You do realize that if you were a B, C, or D-cup that your top would be inappropriate for a work setting, right?”

I laughed and told her that I was extremely cognizant of my small breasts and embraced it, and figured I could get away with wearing this given it’s an after-work party for two people leaving.

She then went on to reveal to me that she was happy that I embraced my small chest, that she failed to do this when she was in her 20s, which then prompted her to get a boob job, hence her big chest now. She said she seriously regretted it, but given that it costs just as much to take them out as to put them in, she couldn’t be bothered to pay to get them removed anymore and just sucked it up.

So… that was not information I needed to know, but great. Now I know it whether I want to or not.

Tonight, I attended the going-away party of our sales leader and one of our most tenured sales account executives here in the New York City office. It was a bittersweet moment considering that I highly respected both of them, and I knew things would be different in our office moving forward with their absence. The going-away party also included many former employees, some of whom had voluntarily left, others who had gotten laid off during the big cut that happened last October in an attempt to bring our company into more of an enterprise-focused era. It was a really good time, one that I enjoyed.

The strangest thing that happened tonight was when one of my former colleagues who showed up was talking to my female colleague and me about how he’s 36 and just hasn’t found the right woman. He’s dated, had serious and non-serious relationships. He’s even had flings with married women and attached women. He asked about our dating statuses, and I shared I was married, and my colleague shared that she was living with her boyfriend. And he looks suggestively at us, “Well, if you’re ever interested or bored and want to hang out one night… I have your numbers, right?”

Did he seriously just proposition the both of us?

I have a really low tolerance for sheltered people, people who refuse to leave their comfort zones, the bubbles they have created for themselves, and the beliefs they carry that are rooted more in ignorance than in actual knowledge of the world. One of the reasons I loved Anthony Bourdain so much is that he was curious in every sense of the word, always sought to understand others rather than be understood by others. He challenged himself. So many people fail to challenge themselves and their beliefs. Some are lazy. Others think they don’t have time. Others simply don’t have the desire. These are not the people I want to spend time with.

For our company’s Impact Week next week, which is our annual volunteer week where we give back to our local communities, one of my participants today messaged me and said that if she didn’t have someone to accompany her up to West Harlem that she refused to come. She and her husband, born and bread on the Jersey Shore, pretty much know nothing about the world outside of the Jersey Shore. She’s barely been to the West Coast, and no, it’s not for lack of money or resources. They barely know Manhattan even though both have worked there for over 20 years. After the last volunteer event, she’d said she didn’t feel safe being in Spanish Harlem, even in the day time. Her husband said that if anyone carried anything remotely valuable in Manhattan that they’d be a “target.” Manhattan is one of the safest places I’ve ever walked through, whether it’s 3pm or 3am. As a relatively young person of color, I’ve never once felt in danger walking these streets. And these white Jersey people do?

I just cannot handle this type of ignorance or sheltered attitude. If she wants to participate, I told her she’s going to have to find someone else to ride the train with her because I’m not going all the way back down to the Flatiron to pick her up when I already live on the Upper West Side.

Chris left this morning for an all-week work trip, so I was left to my own devices today. I didn’t have much desire to leave the neighborhood today, so instead, I spent most of the day obsessing over the cleanliness of the apartment by vacuuming and dusting pretty much every crevice this apartment has. I had already deep-cleaned the bathroom yesterday. Then, I proceeded to hand wash my bras, disinfect our toothbrushes, wash my makeup brushes, and even buff some of the stainless steel appliances in our kitchen. After a 90-minute intense workout at the gym, I showered, did the laundry, went to buy some groceries, and made fresh almond milk and my quick dinner. And with Anthony Bourdain on Parts Unknown in the background, I polished my toe nails and masked my face. I lit candles in the living room to create mood lighting.

I have a hard time staying still. I get annoyed when I feel like I am not doing anything, so then I go find something to do. Anyone who lives with me knows this. My last roommate thought I was crazy. Chris still thinks I like to “fidgit” as he says (I don’t even know how to spell that, but that does not look right). It’s not an entirely bad thing because it means that things get done, and things certainly get cleaned, but it’s bad in that I really don’t know how to relax. I constantly feel like I need to be doing something, producing something. I know I get this from my mom. She’s the exact same way. She feels like she has to be doing something all the time. 

I guess the apple never falls that far from the tree.

It’s as though the morale is so down in our current office that they decided to fly out one of our team managers to host a happy hour for us tonight at a fancy cocktail bar half a block away from our office in the Flatiron. We already had a happy hour to increase team camaraderie last Thursday, but we had to have yet another one today. It’s not that I am complaining about it; it’s more that although I do like nice, well made cocktails that I don’t have to pay for, I think the problems are deeper than what can be solved by getting tipsy with my colleagues.

I originally thought I’d only stay for a drink or two, but I ended up staying out until nearly midnight, which I definitely did not plan at all on doing. Two venues, four drinks, six hours later, it was as though everything just felt like a big blur. But I was extremely cognizant of everything around me. I could feel myself enunciating every syllable clearly to detract from the fact that the alcohol was seeping into my blood and affecting my head. Is this period just a phase, a big haze that will eventually end and morph into something else? I kind of feel like I am floating and things aren’t quite real right now, and I’m not sure why. That then reminded me of this poem I enjoyed by Edgar Allan Poe when I was 13, studying his poetry and short stories. It’s when we ask ourselves what is real vs. what is not, yet we think everything we are experiencing is real. The poem goes something like this: