Commentaries by Cynthia

I might have said that I never wanted to get married again, but I didn’t say that I was planning to give up romance entirely.

It was six months after my separation and I had just turned thirty-two when I met Darrin. He arrived at my house one afternoon to install gas heating logs into my fireplace – a project I was financing with my annual tax refund. Watching Darrin work, I found myself feeling a foreign and carnal pleasure. He was almost picture-perfect with all the stereotypically handsome features of a chiseled face, lean hips, and broad shoulders. He also had the most beautiful set of blue-green eyes I’d ever seen. To say that I was interested in Darrin would be an understatement. I practically ached for him.

We kept in touch after his work in my house was completed. And on one Saturday evening in May, when both the kids were staying with extended family members, Darrin called and I invited him over.

He arrived thirty minutes later, pulling up to my kitchen door on a Harley Davidson motorcycle. Inviting him inside and stepping back, I dreamily thought he looked every bit the Bad Boy as I watched him peel off his black leather chaps and jacket. After the garments were in a pile on the kitchen floor, Darrin looked at me with those beautiful blue-green eyes and said, “Come here.”

He didn’t have to tell me twice. Our passionate embraces would begin in the kitchen, then stagger into the living room before ending up in my bedroom. And I soon learned something else very important about myself: I did like sex, after all.

Despite our mutual pleasure that night, Darrin and I would not become a couple in any true or lasting sense. It would be another six months before I began to date someone seriously. And this new man would change my life in ways I couldn’t have imagined.

They say that opposites attract, and it must be true. His blond hair and fair complexion complimented my olive skin and dark brown hair. He was also a gregarious extrovert who liked being on the go, while I was a reflective introvert who preferred staying at home, especially on the weeknights.

But Keith had a knack of knowing what to say, when to say it, and how to say it. Everything I’d always wanted to hear from a significant other was finally being said; all those sweet nothings that melted me from the inside out. He wined and dined me extensively, always making a point to open and close my car door and pull out my chair in a restaurant. I’d never had a man perform chivalrous acts for me, so I found myself falling helplessly and hopelessly in love. I hadn’t planned it – hadn’t even necessarily wanted it, but there it was. I was in a committed relationship.

Keith was also the publisher of a local weekly tabloid. (And, no, he didn’t need any writers. And, yes, I did ask.) Then, about a year and a half later, Keith decided to convert the tabloid into a weekly newspaper and hired a professional editor to spearhead the conversion.

Soon after, I was having lunch with Keith when I brought up the subject of my writing for the newspaper again. He was matter-of-fact with his reply, stating, “I don’t like mixing business with pleasure, I think it’s generally a bad idea. But you’re welcome to submit articles or columns to the editor, and I will let him make the call. If he likes your writing, you’re in. If he doesn’t, I don’t want your feelings to be hurt or for his decision to have an impact our relationship.”

Agreeing to Keith’s terms, I submitted a piece to the editor. It passed the inspection, so I was technically “in,” and I’ll never forget the first time I saw my words and name in print. Gleefully, I bought copies of the paper for my friends and family. Included in this important list of people was Harry. After handing him a copy of my published column, he looked at it, laid the paper down, and began clapping his hands, saying, “Bravo, bravo!” Grinning shyly and blushing profusely, I went back to my desk and tried to concentrate on my day job.

Upon turning thirty-five, I decided I wanted to buy my own home. Bradley, my son, had already left the nest, so the two-bedroom cottage that went up for sale near Keith’s office seemed to be the perfect home in the ideal location for my teenaged daughter and me. With financial help from Keith, I paid the closing costs and taxes, and after signing a slew of legal papers, I was a new homeowner.

Yes, I had evolved considerably from the oppressed wife of a few years earlier. I had a day job I enjoyed, a boyfriend I loved, a home of my home, and I was earning extra money through the publication of my columns. Life was pretty darn good for this small-town girl.

But then the world suddenly changed. Hundreds of miles from New York City and Washington D.C., my job as a meeting planner would fall victim to the events known as 9-11. The travel industry was hit especially hard after the attacks on our nation. And due to a decrease in airline bookings by our employees, upper management decided to cut three positions in the travel department, and one of those was mine.

Faced with the tasks of updating my resume and filling out applications was not how I wanted to spend the first holiday season in my new home. But I didn’t have a choice. It was either try to find another position in the company or join the unemployment line.

Upon landing a job interview, I found myself growing increasingly nervous over the fact that I was about to become scrutinized by a company manager. During my years of making travel arrangements, I noticed that for every one manager who treated employees respectfully, there were four or five who were complete jerks with seriously inflated egos.

When I first met Stephen Alexander, he seemed pleasant enough: a polite, well-groomed and clean-cut man in his early thirties with dark hair and blue eyes. But what I noticed more than anything was Stephen’s sweaty hand when he shook mine. If I had any doubts about the man being nervous, he soon confirmed it during the job interview when he had difficulty maintaining eye contact with me.

Somehow we both got through the interview. As I was preparing to leave by gathering my purse and various items together, Stephen said, “Oh, I have one more question.”

Pausing, I looked at him expectantly.

“What would you say your two best qualities are?”

Since I’d been on a quest to know and understand myself better, I’d taken numerous online personality tests following my divorce. So with confidence I answered, “I believe I’m a very honest person and a very dedicated one.”

Stephen nodded approvingly and noted my answers on the job interview sheet before him. A couple of weeks later, someone from HR contacted me with a job offer from Stephen. I accepted it, officially becoming an e-mail correspondent in the customer care center.

Buddy’s did not cut my hourly wage, so I tried not to view the change in position as a demotion. I also decided to look on the positive side of the situation. As an e-mail correspondent, I would get to do what I enjoyed most -- write.

My first day on the job, I was introduced to Janice and Sandy. Janice was in her early thirties and the mother of two small children. Sandy was closer to fifty and had plans to retire from Buddy's within weeks.

I soon learned that both these women were severely unhappy and often complained about being stuck in a dead-end job position. Sandy was retiring earlier than she had originally planned and Janice was actively looking for another job within the company. They both stated repeatedly that they wanted out of customer care, one way or the other. It was a red flag that I tried to ignore.

After Sandy’s retirement, Janice and I were solely responsible for answering the customer e-mails that arrived through the company’s website. Even though I missed my friends in the travel department, I enjoyed my new job because I was learning far more about the company and our customer-base than I would have known if I’d remained in my previous position.

But Janice did not share my enthusiasm. “You may like your job now,” she told me dryly. “But give it two years. You will be going out of your mind with boredom. And there will be no chances for you to advance unless you want work the phones. And everyone hates working the phones.”

“Have you talked to Stephen?” I asked Janice. “If you’re burning out, maybe he can help you.”

“Stephen,” Janice said with a roll of her eyes and a sigh. “Let me tell you something about Stephen. He can be nice, but he can also make you cry. I was tenderhearted when I first started working for Stephen. For my own sake, I had to learn to become tougher.”

When I asked Janice what Stephen had said or done to make her cry, she refused to answer. Knowing my own heart was also “tender,” I would have welcomed any pointers on how to keep from offending Stephen unnecessarily.

Sandy’s replacement, Tess, was hired a couple of weeks later. I initially found Tess to be a friendly and down-to-earth person. The former hairdresser in me couldn’t help but notice that Tess was guilty of over-perming her light brown hair. She also had certain hardness about her appearance; a problem that I believed could be corrected with the proper applications of foundation and soft makeup shades.

Once Tess and others in the department learned that I was a former hairdresser, I was somehow expected to help out on those “bad hair days” that are the bane of women everywhere. Although I may sound as though I’m complaining, I actually didn’t mind playing beauty shop in the company bathroom. Helping other women feel better about their appearance was and still is a rewarding experience.

While training Tess to be responsible for the dozens of letters that arrived in the department each week, I chitchatted with her and discovered that we had several things in common. For one, we’d attended and graduated from the same high school. And while I was unaware of it at the time, I learned that I had lived practically next door to Tess’s parents when I moved into the farm house that I once wrote about so fondly.

After Tess was properly trained and handling the letters well on her own, I went back to assisting Janice with the ever-growing number of customer e-mails.

Two months later, Janice announced her intentions to accept a job outside the company. Despite repeated attempts to find another position within Buddy's, she’d given up hope. When relaying her decision to me, Janice said, “You have to know someone important, someone higher-up, to get anywhere here. And I don’t have those connections.”

My care-taking instinct is strong. I’ve always wanted to help people whenever possible. So I went to Stephen with a suggestion. “If there isn’t another position for Janice right now, why can’t management change her title? If you could change her title to team leader, she might consider staying with Buddy's.”

Stephen smiled sympathetically. “I agree. It’s a good idea. But Abner Jones will never go for it,” he said, referring to the call center’s director.

Maybe I should have pressed him to pursue the issue with Abner. But for all I knew, the topic had already been discussed and dismissed. “Well,” I said simply. “It will be our loss, because Janice is a good employee.”

“I agree,” Stephen replied, the same sympathetic look on his face.

A forward-thinking manager would have realized that what had happened to Janice -- the burnout and lack of advancement potential -- could eventually happen to additional members in the correspondence team. But like other problematic issues I would point out to Stephen, this topic was conveniently swept under the rug.