Cash, Leigh and all the other Jewel-4-Lifers have gone out to Las Vegas for a trade show.
It’s peace and quiet over in the “Merchandising Area”. (Last week Ranch, Jr. gave one of his famous unnecessary speeches, disguised as a meeting, this one centered around the hierarchy of our company’s office seating arrangement. “This is Production Department. Of course, around the corner is shipping. This is the merchandising area. And here, well, heere, everyone knows this is the Executive area. If we could imagine that this space has four walls, as if to form a large glass room surrounding this large area. This large, spacious area is the Executive Area.”)
Over in the Merchandising Area, I sit in a grouping of six people. The desks are arranged in rows of 4, facing opposite directions, so our wheeled office chairs back up into each other when one rises from one’s seat. I am lucky enough to sit 2nd from the office thoroughfare, which encircles the 29th floor, rows and rows radiating from a central core. Where there would normally be two desks behind me and Leigh, there is a column that prohibits seats. Our grouping of 6 is intimate, comparatively speaking. However, The Others I sit with shall remain nameless, and they are both on vacation this week, so I have found solace in the peaceful grouping of Ms. Sher, Barry, and myself.
Ms. Sher displays no shame in taking advantage of the times when the Executive team is traveling. She arrives daily by 8:45. Empties her purse of necessities for the day: gold jeweler’s loupe on a long gold chain, with dangles of elongated letter charms spelling S-H-E-R , large handle-less magnifying glass in a gold and diamond frame, her glasses, her head scarf [clear plastic rain bonnet if it’s raining], and of course her lipstick. I think it is Revlon’s Cherries in the Snow. After Barry and I arrive, she dials “David”, cradles the receiver between her ear and neck [she has one of those plastic attachments to make this motion more bearable], asks about a shipment, tells David he better not be lying, then hangs up and goes down 28 floors for a coffee for 40 minutes. She returns and begins reading WWD through her gold and diamond magnifying glass. After a solid hour and twenty minutes of catching on up the fashion industry’s every movement, she takes her pocketbook and heads down to Blake & Todd for lunch. She is usually gone until about 1:30. Upon return, she rings David and sometimes another mysterious person named “Sima”, thumbs through the paper job bags in her single red Akrobin, and continues her reading through the magnifying glass, her head never ceasing to bobble. She leaves anytime from 2:30 onward, never staying past 4:00 p.m. Repeat daily, Monday through Thursday. Fridays off. It seems like not such a bad life, to be a colored gemstone buyer for a men’s jewelry company at age 75. Ms. Sher is milking it for all it’s worth.
Time for my own lunch…. She’s back!
2:20 p.m.
And now on to Barry. Barry is Guyanese, 35, married and lives in the Bronx. Now that Cash is my direct supervisor, Barry and I do not work on the same things. He sits nowhere near his two team members and keeps very quiet. He slips in and out, always with good explanations: “I am meeting the modelmaker.” “I have to go to 45th Street, and I will pick up lunch while I am out.” “I have to go to the caster.” Barry is very stealthy and gone all the time while everyone is away, leaving me to sit here and write this post in solace…
Solace or boredom? The few attractive young men in the office are all off in Vegas, doing what they do, being diamond bros. Not that I would crush on someone in this office anyway, but …
… My prospects are feeling kind of slim.
And I thought one of the major points of this blog was to discuss. boys. !
Looking to hook a man. No one’s biting. S.O.S. Lonely on jewelry island.
deux mille six 