I moved to Seattle five years ago, after being laid off from my job in New York at one of those startups where employees rally around the VC-fueled dream until they’re dumped via email arnd locked out of the office. A job at a larger, more established company like Amazon sounded good. Solid. For my second round of job interviews, I had been called in for meetings at the department’s temporary office in the Columbia Center tower. In a city where executives wear faded jeans and backpacks to work, the Columbia Center is Seattle’s lone totem to conspicuous consumption: seventy-six floors that hover over downtown’s more modest skyscrapers by a good two to three hundred feet, and are wrapped in reflective black glass.
Amazon prides itself on a rigorous hiring process. For a low-level merchandising job in Amazon’s books department, after passing two phone screens that included a logic puzzle—“How many floors are there in the Columbia Center? No, don’t look it up! Pretend there is no Internet”—I was called in for five back-to-back interviews that lasted from morning through lunch. During a break between interviews, the human resources recruiter, Ashley Jones1, came in to tell me more about the company’s benefits. There is something about the fastidious personal grooming of HR recruiters that makes one feel dumpy; gazing at me behind thick, mascara-coated eyelashes that boasted immaculate lash separation, she talked 401Ks and stock options while I stared longingly at her frizz-less locks. “And when we move to our new offices, you can bring your dog to work,” she said.
We live in such a dog-adoring culture that it’s hard to admit when you aren’t totally enamored of them. What you are supposed to feel—what you must always feel—is love. And dog owners are blessed with the extraordinary ability to call bullshit; they can sniff out your limp pats, your half-hearted game of catch. Soon the question comes: “Oh, you don’t like dogs?”
Translation:
1. How can you not like dogs?
2. How can you not like my dog?
3. When a dying baby’s in the street, do you kick it ‘til it fits in the gutter?
No one starts out this way. There’s a time when all kids want a pet, around the time when spreading boogers on the furniture is still okay. My older sister and I worked our way through a small menagerie of pets—hamsters, parakeets, and fish—though everything seemed to perish or run from our feeble, incapable hands. The grass in our backyard grew high, enriched by the nutrients of our decaying mistakes.
But when I was around nine, I was traumatized by my cousins’ unneutered dog, Max. When I visited them in Florida, he ignored the rest of the family, ran over to me, and humped my leg like he hadn’t had sex in years. No one would admit it that perhaps Max picked me because I looked most like a dog. My hair was black just like Max’s coat, and, crouched on the floor screaming, I was just about the same height as a German Shepherd. My cousin Susan always let it go on for a bit too long; I have never understood why people call out the names of their dogs when dogs only respond ten percent of the time, and like humans, never when they are having sex.
“Max! Max! (Ha, ha.) Oh Max, get off her!”
Hump. Hump.
“Bad dog. (Hee hee.) So bad!”
Hump. Hump. Hump.
“Max, what am I going to do with you?”
Humphumphumphumphumphumphump.
After two hours or just ten seconds—what did it matter, when a dog was humping the crap out of you?—she would amble the three long yards across the room to yank Max away, and I would crawl out from under the blanket, the only shield between me and Max’s terrifying dog penis. For years after, Susan would keep me up to date on how my sexual assailant was doing. “When are you coming back?” my cousin asked. “Max misses you.”
My job started in July, and we were supposed to move to Amazon’s new campus the following May. The new campus would unite most of the company into one luxurious mega-compound, the Amazonian equivalent of the Googleplex. I hoped to forget about the new buildings and their dog-filled corridors, but the move was always hovering in the distance, its little puppy paws scratching around the doorway of my mind, dying to be let out so it could take a massive dump. I started to dread my morning hike to work even more than usual. As the date grew closer, you could hear murmurings of excitement around the office and impassioned debates about pet supplies. Kayla, who sat to my left, wanted to discuss her dog’s latest issue. “He keeps peeing on the front yard. It’s so annoying. The neighbors keep complaining about our yard. So now I’m feeding him these pills that won’t kill the grass,” she said.
“There are pills for that?” I asked. I pictured a dog collapsing from acute renal failure in a flower patch. The dog would be fucked, but the begonias, immaculate. “How does that work?”
In November, I felt encouraged by an email sent out by our department head, Scott Reynolds. “Can each of you reply back to me if a) you have allergies to dogs and to what degree, e.g., can’t be on the same floor or just can’t pet them, or b) are afraid or don’t like dogs.”
“Can’t be on the same floor” indicated there might be dog-free floors, which made sense: A multibillion-dollar corporation that had built out space in their complex for nap rooms, outdoor decks, and organic vending machines had surely carved out a few dog-free floors for those of us who wanted to work in a yip-free environment. I speedily typed back my response. “I’m allergic to dog hair—can’t be around furniture or whatever for very long that dogs have been on.” I am far more allergic to cats than dogs, but an allergy is an allergy.
“So if someone had a dog in their office or at their desk,” he wrote back, “would that create problems?”
by Corina Zappia, The Awl | Read more:
Image: wablair
We live in such a dog-adoring culture that it’s hard to admit when you aren’t totally enamored of them. What you are supposed to feel—what you must always feel—is love. And dog owners are blessed with the extraordinary ability to call bullshit; they can sniff out your limp pats, your half-hearted game of catch. Soon the question comes: “Oh, you don’t like dogs?”
Translation:
1. How can you not like dogs?
2. How can you not like my dog?
3. When a dying baby’s in the street, do you kick it ‘til it fits in the gutter?
No one starts out this way. There’s a time when all kids want a pet, around the time when spreading boogers on the furniture is still okay. My older sister and I worked our way through a small menagerie of pets—hamsters, parakeets, and fish—though everything seemed to perish or run from our feeble, incapable hands. The grass in our backyard grew high, enriched by the nutrients of our decaying mistakes.
But when I was around nine, I was traumatized by my cousins’ unneutered dog, Max. When I visited them in Florida, he ignored the rest of the family, ran over to me, and humped my leg like he hadn’t had sex in years. No one would admit it that perhaps Max picked me because I looked most like a dog. My hair was black just like Max’s coat, and, crouched on the floor screaming, I was just about the same height as a German Shepherd. My cousin Susan always let it go on for a bit too long; I have never understood why people call out the names of their dogs when dogs only respond ten percent of the time, and like humans, never when they are having sex.
“Max! Max! (Ha, ha.) Oh Max, get off her!”
Hump. Hump.
“Bad dog. (Hee hee.) So bad!”
Hump. Hump. Hump.
“Max, what am I going to do with you?”
Humphumphumphumphumphumphump.
After two hours or just ten seconds—what did it matter, when a dog was humping the crap out of you?—she would amble the three long yards across the room to yank Max away, and I would crawl out from under the blanket, the only shield between me and Max’s terrifying dog penis. For years after, Susan would keep me up to date on how my sexual assailant was doing. “When are you coming back?” my cousin asked. “Max misses you.”
My job started in July, and we were supposed to move to Amazon’s new campus the following May. The new campus would unite most of the company into one luxurious mega-compound, the Amazonian equivalent of the Googleplex. I hoped to forget about the new buildings and their dog-filled corridors, but the move was always hovering in the distance, its little puppy paws scratching around the doorway of my mind, dying to be let out so it could take a massive dump. I started to dread my morning hike to work even more than usual. As the date grew closer, you could hear murmurings of excitement around the office and impassioned debates about pet supplies. Kayla, who sat to my left, wanted to discuss her dog’s latest issue. “He keeps peeing on the front yard. It’s so annoying. The neighbors keep complaining about our yard. So now I’m feeding him these pills that won’t kill the grass,” she said.
“There are pills for that?” I asked. I pictured a dog collapsing from acute renal failure in a flower patch. The dog would be fucked, but the begonias, immaculate. “How does that work?”
In November, I felt encouraged by an email sent out by our department head, Scott Reynolds. “Can each of you reply back to me if a) you have allergies to dogs and to what degree, e.g., can’t be on the same floor or just can’t pet them, or b) are afraid or don’t like dogs.”
“Can’t be on the same floor” indicated there might be dog-free floors, which made sense: A multibillion-dollar corporation that had built out space in their complex for nap rooms, outdoor decks, and organic vending machines had surely carved out a few dog-free floors for those of us who wanted to work in a yip-free environment. I speedily typed back my response. “I’m allergic to dog hair—can’t be around furniture or whatever for very long that dogs have been on.” I am far more allergic to cats than dogs, but an allergy is an allergy.
“So if someone had a dog in their office or at their desk,” he wrote back, “would that create problems?”
by Corina Zappia, The Awl | Read more:
Image: wablair
