Back in December I wrote a business plan, part of which entailed seeking out some mentoring opportunities in order to get a promotion. I found a program through a local trade organization, applied and was accepted, and began exchanging emails with my designated mentor. Tonight was the orientation meeting.
I had disliked my mentor from the start of our exchanges - he seemed eager to impress me with his knowledge of my firm and its leadership, dropping names and even inquiring about the reasons behind a recent layoff. My emails back to him were forced, generically enthusiastic and cordial. "That all sounds great!" I wrote. "Looking forward to meeting you! Best, Megan."
Before I left for the meeting I declared that he gave me the feeling of industrial carpet and mothballs. Something stale and undesirable. I just had that sense about him, though I knew it was an unfair and premature judgment. "He's tall, with bad breath and a close talker," I told my coworker on my way out the door. She rolled her eyes.
The meeting was being held in an unremarkable office two blocks from Penn Station. I walked in late to a group of ten or so women picking at styrofoam plates of nacho cheese Doritos. "Hello," called the host cheerfully, a round-cheeked man with fly-away hair in his 50's. I introduced myself and scanned the room, stopping at the only other man in the room, my mentor.
He was as I'd pictured him, slouching nonchalantly in an ill-fitting button down and goofy tie. He had patchy bald spots and lopsided, watery eyes. We waved hello.
The orientation presentation was boring. Our host talked about Myers-Briggs tests and the wealth of other management personality tests one could find on 'da intahnet,' walking us through a few he'd printed out for us. I began doodling leaves and mouths on my paper, thinking about sex. Then the presentation was over. People were standing up, gravitating towards their assigned mentors and proteges. Oh no. I looked up, and my mentor smiled at me. "Don't go anywhere, Megan!" he barked jovially. I pulled out a business card and began my reluctant walk around the room to the other side of the table to meet him.
He smelled like English Leather up close - a spicy, cloying old-man cologne. I worried he'd ask me about my goals and try to pump me for more information about my no-longer coworker, and he did, but mostly he talked. He told me what was hard about working in marketing, lambasting the types of pricipals (like mine, he seemed to be saying) who didn't respect or understand business development. "They fire the marketing people and then they're shocked when it takes a week to put a proposal together!" he cried. "And it looks like crap! Not like what we did!" I smiled wanly. He was off target, wrong about my experience, but he didn't absorb my corrections when I offered them.
He is, presumably, trying to help by involving himself on this committee, by agreeing to meet with me every month and talk about my career goals. The lapsed Christian in me chides myself for my bad, ungrateful attitude. But then I think, maybe he's just doing it for himself, for the sense of importance and knowledge it gives him, and isn't it possible he's misrepresenting himself, wasting my time.
Industry gatherings are dreadful, deathly things. I go because I feel it's a small insurance policy, a spotty one most likely, but some assurance that if I'm ever laid off, I'll know people who will at least look at my resume. But I can never shake the awareness of all the strange bodies folded in chairs around me, their scents and variously processed hair and sagging skin. How did I end up here, I wonder. What am I doing here? And what will I talk about with my mentor, every month, face to face across a Starbucks coffee table? How long will I have to sit through this?
