Free Bossypants by Tina Fey

compass?

    One day sweet goony Timmy came down to the lobby with a dark look in his eyes. He was pacing the lobby, ignoring us. “Heeth off his medth!” Joe Daffy-Ducked from the mail room when he saw him. “Heeth off his medth!” Joe’s Daffy Duckism spread into his body as he flitted around in a panic. By the time I figured out that Joe was saying “He’s off his meds,” as in “off his medication,” it was too late.
    Sweet Timmy had rushed up to a young mom in Lycra workout pants and blurted, “I wanna squirt it in your mouth.” Poor Tim, he was in big trouble. Mr. Mrkkkzzz had to be called in early. The young mother was beside herself. That’s the kind of trouble you get when diverse groups of people actually cross paths with one another. That’s why many of the worst things in the world happen in and around Starbucks bathrooms.

    I started to see a pattern at the Young Men’s Christian Association. It was a power pyramid. At the bottom were all these disenfranchised residents who had to be taken care of like children, above them were a middle class of women who did all the work and kept the place running, and above them were two or three of the least-useful men you ever met. There was our comptroller, Lonny, who never once entered a room without saying, “Are we having fun yet?” He never went anywhere without food on his face. And his exit line was always “There’s a million stories in the naked city.” There was the program director, who talked exclusively in nonsense business language: “We are attempting to pro-activate the community by utilizing a series of directives intended to maximate communicative agreeance.” At the very top of the pyramid was Executive Director Rick Chang, who had no idea who anyone was or what anyone did. He’s the one who reprimanded me for peeling an orange at the front desk.

    I heard from Donna that an office job was opening up in the office. “Vicky’s assistant’s going back to school. Stop. Think I’m gonna go for it. Stop.” I was happy for Donna. Getting a job in the office would literally change her life.

    I continued to be strung along by Eli No Shoulders—which is what he’d be called if this were a Native American folktale. He now claimed to have broken up with his girlfriend. I sat through a lot of Hal Hartley movies. He described his plans for a one-man show about Charlie Chaplin. Nothing came of any of it.

    By the end of January, I had started taking improv classes at night. I was making new friends, actual friends who were not from planet Grim. But the classes cost money, and my 4:40 A.M. wake-up was getting harder and harder. One February morning was so cold that they closed school. There wasn’t any snow; they just closed school because they didn’t want kids dropping dead at the bus stop. I waited for the train at 5:10 A.M. wrapped in multiple hats and scarves so that only my eyes were exposed. By the time I got to Evanston, all the blood vessels around my eyes had burst from the temperature. I ran into Gregory. He told me his story and I assured him that I always wore a bike helmet. When I finally punched in, one of my coworkers at the front desk was giggling about something. He told me that Daffy Duck Joe was telling people that he and I were “doing it.” That’s what I got for engaging in simple pleasantries? A sixty-year-old hobo jerking it to me upstairs? Before I could get too worked up, Gregory was now at the front desk. As I swiped his membership card, he introduced himself to me, told me his story, and suggested I wear a bike helmet. Rising to an Irish boil behind Gregory was John Donnelly, who could not be kept waiting. “Take my card. Do you know who I am goddammit?”

    Enough was enough. I was going to have to steal that office job from Donna. And that’s where my college education finally gave me the unfair advantage I’d been waiting for. I wore jeans to my interview with Vicky. It was easy. Did I have basic computer