ultimate humiliation. And just how was she supposed to meet men like that?
“No, thank you.” Darcy stood up. It was clear that Junior here wasn’t going to be able to help her. It was time to go straight to the source—the companies themselves—and show this little twit just how employable she was.
Darcy had no idea just how unemployable she was.
By the end of the day, she’d visited the Human Resources departments at six major corporations in west Plano. The applications she’d filled out had netted her only two interviews, because most of them stopped the process at that stage with the words she didn’t want to hear:
You have no experience. Thanks, but no thanks.
After her last stop, she got into Gertie and sat there, wondering what to do next. Little Scotty had been right. They all wanted her to be “computer literate.” Not only that, but the phone systems she saw today looked like the instrument panels of 747s and came complete with voice mail systems so convoluted it took a flow chart to follow them. They expected a receptionist to do all sorts of mousing around on a computer in addition to looking good, saying hello, and making coffee. Sometime in the past fifteen years, a race of three-handed receptionists had to have surfaced who could actually perform all those functions at once.
As the day progressed, she’d moved from the certainty that she was going to walk right into a cushy job and find the man of her financial dreams to the uncertainty of whether she’d be able to find a job at all. The very idea that all she was qualified to do was put on a paper hat and flip burgers scared her to death. It was even possible that if she went head-to-head with a McTeenager for that job, she’d come out on the losing end.
She rested her forehead on Gertie’s steering wheel, trying to keep from falling apart, trying to think of a way out of this horrible mess.
Well,
she thought as she slowly raised her head,
there might be one place she could get a job . . . .
No. That was nuts. Even though she was facing the possibility of lifelong poverty, she still had a little bit of pride. The last thing she wanted to do was go back and beg for a job from the crabbiest man alive.
Then she thought about the alternative, which was taking up permanent residence in Dysfunction Junction with no ticket out. At least she could get a little money ahead and some recent job experience so she could get back on her feet again.
Oh, God. Was she actually considering this?
Yes. She was. At least it was a job she knew she could handle. With only a few people in the office, their phone system couldn’t possibly have more than a few lines coming in, and the copier looked as if it had been ripped right out of the 1980s. The big boss clearly needed a personality transplant, but maybe he’d be out of the office most of the time stealing cars from poor, unfortunate people like her and she wouldn’t have to see him very often.
It wasn’t just
a
solution to her problem. Right now, it looked like her
only
solution. Bright and early in the morning, she was going to pay John Stark a visit, and she wasn’t leaving until he gave her that job.
Chapter 7
A t eight o’clock the next morning, John was in the storage room at the office, digging around for a file he swore had simply disintegrated into thin air. He’d been through practically every box in the place, but still he couldn’t find it. He’d had so many clerks through here—both temporary ones and permanent ones who didn’t work out—that the filing system was in shambles. He closed that box and shoved it aside, too, with a sigh of disgust. Every moment he had to spend doing crap like this was a moment he wasn’t making money bringing in cars.
He picked up his coffee cup and came out of the storage room, surprised to see a woman sitting at the clerk’s desk chatting with Tony. And the moment he realized who the woman was, he could already feel his day going
“No, thank you.” Darcy stood up. It was clear that Junior here wasn’t going to be able to help her. It was time to go straight to the source—the companies themselves—and show this little twit just how employable she was.
Darcy had no idea just how unemployable she was.
By the end of the day, she’d visited the Human Resources departments at six major corporations in west Plano. The applications she’d filled out had netted her only two interviews, because most of them stopped the process at that stage with the words she didn’t want to hear:
You have no experience. Thanks, but no thanks.
After her last stop, she got into Gertie and sat there, wondering what to do next. Little Scotty had been right. They all wanted her to be “computer literate.” Not only that, but the phone systems she saw today looked like the instrument panels of 747s and came complete with voice mail systems so convoluted it took a flow chart to follow them. They expected a receptionist to do all sorts of mousing around on a computer in addition to looking good, saying hello, and making coffee. Sometime in the past fifteen years, a race of three-handed receptionists had to have surfaced who could actually perform all those functions at once.
As the day progressed, she’d moved from the certainty that she was going to walk right into a cushy job and find the man of her financial dreams to the uncertainty of whether she’d be able to find a job at all. The very idea that all she was qualified to do was put on a paper hat and flip burgers scared her to death. It was even possible that if she went head-to-head with a McTeenager for that job, she’d come out on the losing end.
She rested her forehead on Gertie’s steering wheel, trying to keep from falling apart, trying to think of a way out of this horrible mess.
Well,
she thought as she slowly raised her head,
there might be one place she could get a job . . . .
No. That was nuts. Even though she was facing the possibility of lifelong poverty, she still had a little bit of pride. The last thing she wanted to do was go back and beg for a job from the crabbiest man alive.
Then she thought about the alternative, which was taking up permanent residence in Dysfunction Junction with no ticket out. At least she could get a little money ahead and some recent job experience so she could get back on her feet again.
Oh, God. Was she actually considering this?
Yes. She was. At least it was a job she knew she could handle. With only a few people in the office, their phone system couldn’t possibly have more than a few lines coming in, and the copier looked as if it had been ripped right out of the 1980s. The big boss clearly needed a personality transplant, but maybe he’d be out of the office most of the time stealing cars from poor, unfortunate people like her and she wouldn’t have to see him very often.
It wasn’t just
a
solution to her problem. Right now, it looked like her
only
solution. Bright and early in the morning, she was going to pay John Stark a visit, and she wasn’t leaving until he gave her that job.
Chapter 7
A t eight o’clock the next morning, John was in the storage room at the office, digging around for a file he swore had simply disintegrated into thin air. He’d been through practically every box in the place, but still he couldn’t find it. He’d had so many clerks through here—both temporary ones and permanent ones who didn’t work out—that the filing system was in shambles. He closed that box and shoved it aside, too, with a sigh of disgust. Every moment he had to spend doing crap like this was a moment he wasn’t making money bringing in cars.
He picked up his coffee cup and came out of the storage room, surprised to see a woman sitting at the clerk’s desk chatting with Tony. And the moment he realized who the woman was, he could already feel his day going
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