Author's Chapter Notes:
A secret: I desperately want Karen off the show.
And yet....I suspect she's more like me than any other character on the damn thing.
Clearly I need therapy. But, fortunately, it is alot cheaper to take other people's characters and make up stories about them.
It wasn't fair.
Her whole life, she had wanted--WANTED. And oh, how she had tried. But, it always seemed like there was someone else who got the object of her desire, someone else who didn't deserve it, who didn't WANT and TRY and FIGHT with half her dedication. She'd practice and train until her muscles screamed for mercy, and end up on the second string when a relaxed "natural athlete" waltzed in to tryouts. Second chair clarinet, never mind that the first chair girl never did scales the way that she did, every afternoon without fail. It was always thus, and it just wasn't fair.
Take work, for example. Karen wanted nothing more than to be a successful career woman. From childhood she had imagined her grown up self as a confident and secure business woman, taking the big city by storm....like Mary Tyler Moore, but not at all silly. Serious. Karen was absolutely certain the the glow of her blazing success would immediately awe into silence any fool who laughed at her, who didn't see her dignity, her sophistication, her ultimate respectability.
But work refused to be her time to shine. She didn't get the MetLife management program that she wanted out of college, instead she got a sales position at a minor paper company. People told her she was lucky, after all, so many of her classmates were bartending as they hunted for a "grown up job." And, yes, it was a pretty good job, but not THE job, not the career that would turn her in to a confident icon, striding purposefully down Manhattan streets in Prada pumps, swinging an Hermes attache with a stern elan. And then, to add insult to injury, she wasn't great at it. Oh, she was good, but not great. She worked her ass (a fine one, thanks to Atkins and thrice-weekly Pilates) off, refusing to waste time with silliness during the workday. And, yet, it seemed that success constantly eluded her. She would stay after work to polish her sales report, and then it would for some reason be wrong, just WRONG. Her sales numbers were respectable, but never placed her at the top of the monthly chart.
And then, there was the "networking," the "face time" that had been deemed lacking in her annual performance review. The rest of the team at the Worcester office were all men, and they liked to play fantasy football and drink at a strip club after work. Karen had thought she could use this to her advantage, by working when they fooled around. But, it turned out, it only made them call her "ice queen" and they never gave her the good leads. And that was when she decided.
"Fuck this." she thought. "I can't play their game. But I have a game of my own that I never lose." And she started smiling at the sales team leader a little wider, drooping her eyelids just the right amount when she leaned over his desk to show him her reports. And, it wasn't so bad. He was cute enough, and it turned out that she actually liked him. And then, she *really* liked him. And that was her mistake.
Things with Drake had ended badly -- very badly. But, in the interest of company harmony, she had managed to get a transfer to the Stamford office, which had to be better. It was close to New York, for one thing, and, for another, it was a far richer market than Worcester had ever been. This time, she was prepared. At the company picnic, she found a salesman from the Stamford office and it wasn't hard to get information from him. A few smiles and praise of a cappella music earned her the valuable information that her new boss was VERY in to "Call of Duty" and his favorite movie was "Annie Hall."
The next morning, Karen bought her first video game and 4 trouser suits.
And, things had gone fairly well at Stamford. She couldn't flirt her way out of trouble with Josh; he wasn't so much an ethical guy as he was one who could not be distracted from his intense love of himself. Flattery usually went well, and her Call of Duty skills were of a value beyond price. When she heard about the new guy transferring from Scranton (what the hell went on in SCRANTON, of all the God-forsaken places?) she was skeptical. And, frankly, when he arrived, he annoyed the hell out of her, with his goofy looks and silly jokes. She made every effort to distance herself from him, as she knew that he could never be taken seriously by ANYONE, and that affliction was certainly catching.
But, strangely enough, his first month sales numbers were the top of the office. First month! And, rumor had it that Jan particularly liked him, thought he had "upper management' written all over him. And, if there was one person who Karen most envied, it was Jan Levinson. (No longer Gould, Karen didn't know anything about her ex-husband, but she liked to fantasize that he had lacked the ambition to keep up with his high-powered wife.) And then, when she messed up, this Jim guy actually covered for her -- even when he could have capitalized on the opportunity to showcase his preparedness. Ugh. He was one of THEM -- the winners, the ones who always came in first. He led in sales, never missed a report, but still goofed off all the time and acted about as professionally as a giant dog with a bandanna around its neck.
She hated him. And oh, how she wanted him.
She cursed herself for being attracted to him -- he was so dorky and goofy and unsophisticated. He'd grown up in a small town, gone to a Catholic college, and then gotten a job right down the street from his fraternity house. She couldn't imagine him walking beside her on that Manhattan street. But she could imagine all kinds of other places that she'd like him to be beside her. And, if rumors were to be believed, there was about to be a massive downsizing; it couldn't hurt to be attached to Jan's golden boy, could it?
So, she followed him back to Scranton (SCRANTON! she thought with disgust. This had better be a stepping stone to Corporate in New York, she resolved.) and the office he had left only a few months ago. She figured this "small pond" would be just the place for her to finally become the big fish. She fantasized about the small town rubes, impressed with her sophistication. Jim had been so funny when he described his coworkers to her...they sounded like characters in a movie. They wouldn't know what hit them when they saw her stride in the door.....But, then....nothing ever turned out as she had planned.
She struggled to make a sale. Local business owners seemed completely unmoved by her $400 shoes and her professional air. They all wanted to know where she had gone to school, and did she know any of their big customers. She couldn't believe it when she went on a sales call with dowdy old Phyllis, who humiliated her with a ridiculous hairstyle and then showed up even her pride when it turned out that the hair was the key to the sale. And Jim....Jim was slipping away.....Sure, she found a bond with him in laughing at the Scranton office weirdos, but beneath his jokes, he actually seemed to LIKE these people, and more than once she found herself on the receiving end of a strange look when she commented on their buffoonish boss or that absurd beet farmer that somehow managed to be the top salesman in the office....
And then, there was her. Jim said she wasn't even interested in him. And yet, he couldn't let her go. And Karen knew it was happening again. The receptionist, the mousy girl in the JC Penney cardigan and hair from 1986 had his heart, and she, the practiced, honed beauty who spoke flawless French (in more way than one, she thought to herself) was losing.
Second again, she thought bitterly, as she methodically shredded her message slips, tainted with HER pretty artist's handwriting. It was time for another transfer.
