Girlboss

The small woman showed me to her large Mercedes SUV and I thought I’m going to die in this town because she can’t see over the steering wheel. She lived there, though, in the snowy place, and the combo of having done the drive to and from our corporate office at least a dozen times before—plus, I assume, 360-degree car cameras—meant she could get around as well as any other lady using a billion pounds of steel to move 90 pounds of person.

I had a flight home to California to catch, but not before participating in an evening of focus groups at a nearby restaurant. We wanted honest user feedback on a product, and she, my boss—a new C-suiter brought in by a new CEO—volunteered to get me there. But first, she had to pick up her dogs from daycare. I clutched a cooler full of my own breastmilk as we sped down the road. That’s when she started talking.

“How many kids do you have?”

“Two.”

“How old are they?”

“One and three.”

“I have three. Six, nine, and twelve. I always wanted three.”

“Cool. That’s great.”

A twinge of annoyance, on her part. I could feel it. She wanted more and I wasn’t giving it to her.

We stopped to grab her two pups. Back on the road, with the dogs staring at me from the back seat, she went at it again.

“It was just something we always knew we wanted, three.”

“Sweet.”

“It’s hard, adding the third. But so worth it.”

I nodded. She pulled into a three-car garage, fully lined with cubbies. Clearly, this woman was into threes.

She told me I could come in, she just had to drop off the dogs and change her clothes. I stood in a hallway with views of a slate-colored living room lit by a gas fire, and a newly remodeled kitchen. Blue island. White Shaker cabinets. It was the only allowable option that year, not just in L.A. where I lived. If you were going to remodel your kitchen, this was the only thing that could be done. I briefly felt sorry for her, that she had no other choice.

She came downstairs, wearing a new outfit, pants instead of a skirt, babbling about how her family was so lucky to live in this house. She felt self-conscious about the grandeur, in front of me, I could tell. It was a nice house. A large house, in an expensive neighborhood. But I was not shocked to see it. As soon as she became my boss, I researched. I already knew she lived there. Knew it came from her husband’s family, that he worked at his dad’s business.

I wasn’t trying to be rude, by not talking much. I was just tired and cautious. Once, a previous iteration of her had called me directly to ask my opinion about something. The day after I gave it, I found myself in a meeting where she claimed my use of the word “embarrassing” was cruel to my coworkers. HR rolled his eyes. She was let go in a merger two weeks later.

(Should you find yourself in a similar workplace opinion-soliciting situation: Do not be concise. Replace accurate adjectives like “embarrassing” or “dense” with “I see great opportunity for growth.”)

Back in the car, sans dogs, we were finally en route to the restaurant. We sat in awkward silence until she felt compelled to fill the void with thoughts, I believed, she otherwise might not have shared. Like how her family moved back to this town after a tragic accident at her husband’s previous job left him feeling wrecked, because he felt responsible. So even though they’d tried to make it out there on their own, in another state, they came back—they’d always wanted to come back!—to where her husband grew up. Where he could work at his family’s company.

Was this…bonding? Was I supposed to respond?

“I’m sorry. But it is a beautiful place to live.”

“Yes! And a great place to raise children. We wanted more space, children need space. You don’t have any space out there in Los Angeles.”

Was that a question?

“Not for three…”

At this moment, I believed my company’s new C-suite might not want to pay maternity leave. That the driving force behind this painful mom-to-mom talk was an attempt to learn things she legally was not entitled to ask.

I didn’t have paid leave for my first child, I did for my second. I had no intention of having a third, but that was none of her business. The new execs, it seemed, also didn’t fancy remote management. The type of work that let me keep my sanity as a new mother.

She pulled into the restaurant. I thanked her for the ride. We gathered user feedback. I Ubered to the airport and stood next to a TSA agent as he waved a little piece of paper over each bag of my breast milk to see if it was explosive.

I told the new CEO I wouldn’t move. I did not say his taste in executives made it an easy decision. Not long after, the small woman with the large Mercedes SUV flashed on my screen in a video call. It was my last day.