My Glamorous Job

              As I walked out of the elevator, I saw bright, pink capital letters spelling Glamour. I opened the double glass doors, and felt like I was Anne Hathaway starring in the movie, The Devil Wears Prada. Hathaway plays “a naive young woman who comes to New York and scores a job as the assistant to one of the city's biggest magazine editors, the ruthless and cynical Miranda Priestly” (The Devil Wears Prada). I envisioned my boss, Rachael, to be similar to Miranda Priestly. Rachael is currently the fashion editor at Glamour, and former assistant to Edward Enninful at Vogue. The first room I walked into was filled with twenty other interns, in a room that was the size of my small bedroom. This room was called, “the closet,” and was where I would be working for the next three months. There were three computers against one part of the room, and shoes in all different sizes and colors from the floor to the ceiling on the other side. This is what I imagined my dream closet to look like, with shoes organized from top to bottom, and jewelry, sunglasses, and belts on top of the counter space. There was no room to fit anything else, especially not twenty interns.  We all eyed each other up and down, as we sat in rows facing the editors. One by one, the editors from each section of the magazine entered the room and introduced themselves by name and title. I started to feel claustrophobic, as there were no windows in the room. This was the first time I had seen Rachael in person, since our phone interview a couple months prior. As all the interns proceeded to leave the closet, Rachael started talking to another girl who was seated with me. I thought I was Rachael’s only intern this summer, but she wanted extra help so she hired another intern, Jodie. I took one look at this other intern, and knew she would not make it in this industry. She arrived her first day wearing a long, knit, black dress with a zigzag pattern that did not flatter her figure, and sported Tiffany and Co. prescription glasses, a diamond necklace, and Cartier love bracelet. She looked more suitable to be working in a lawyer’s office than a fashion magazine. She was wearing more labels that I have ever seen on one person, and the price tag of her outfit was more than Rachael makes in a year’s salary.

            Right away, I knew that working with Jodie meant I was going to have a long and miserable summer. Jodie’s work ethic and personality was completely different than mine, and we disagreed on everything. I thought that working at Glamour would be challenging for me, which is why I was interested in working there; I never thought that working closely with someone like Jodie would be even more challenging. Jodie had no social skills, no sense of style, persistent, and annoying because she asked too many questions that were self-explanatory. I was embarrassed to work with her not only because of what she wore to work every day, which was equivalent to how much it costs to buy a house, but because she would hover around Rachael’s desk waiting to be given a new task. I, on the other hand, waited patiently and kept myself busy by working with the other interns in the closet when Rachael did not have any work for us. I wanted to gain both the experience of working in the closet and working for Rachael, which is what Rachael told us to do on the first day.

 

~Cristina Mollis