New York City – The Tragic Queen

After much deliberation, I have decided that I am not meant to work for a living.

I respect the lifestyle, but it’s just not for me.

*A glamorous headshot of me, taken at work*

School’s back in session, so I can finally tell you all about the joys of my New York City job, how I was every inch the slick professional in chic pumps, ready to “shake up the game” or something like that.

A few weeks ago, I completed my summer gig of working as a receptionist at a zillenial fin-tech place, having found the job through a temp agency.

*Photographic evidence of me working for a living*

My parents told me to apply at a temp agency, something that I believed to be a thing from their New York City days that no longer existed, like subway tokens and paying a buck 85 for your coffee. As it turns out, temp agencies are still alive and well, unlike the other facets of their New York City days, when they could afford a walk-up on practically no budget with a job that they got by checking the want-ads one afternoon.

*My mother requested pics of my work clothes everyday. Here they are*

Through Taylor Hodson, I got a job as a receptionist at a company that, like most people, doesn’t even have a landline. My job was primarily to greet people and to shred meaningless documents, something that they trusted a 23 year old to do perfectly.

This was one of my first ever big girl jobs, not a part time internship that paid me minimum wage, gave me one day off a week, and let me roll in at 10 AM. Working a full forty hour work week for above minimum wage felt like graduating past that point in your school career where you get to have naptime.

*A hardworking professional, as you can see*

Unlike my previous part-time employment, I actually got off work feeling like I’d earned the right to a Friday afternoon happy hour drink as well as the right to yell at tourists walking three abreast on the sidewalk while I hurtled my body into my subway stop in the morning.

I filled out an I-9, a W-2, and an NDA, before completing a sexual harassment lecture and quiz that asked real head scratchers like, “is commenting on your coworkers breasts while she’s lactating sexual harassment?”

I practiced my route to work the day before in order to ensure that I could get there in a New York Minute. Then, I did some of new-job-pregaming-rituals the night before, like watching Anne Hathaway play a plucky career woman in one of her films (The Devil Wears Prada, The Intern, etc.). She is every woman… but she is a little bit more me than the rest of you. I’m sorry, it’s the big brown eyes and the long brown hair.

I’d wake up every morning and listen to Megan Thee Stallion rap about “holding a glock in her birkin,” two things that I don’t own, before manning a desk for eight hours.

I’d gotten a taste of rush hour traffic at my old job, but would now get to enjoy a long commute during rush hour in the middle of a heat wave. Every subway car was sardined with people, except for the one half-full car that has no air conditioning, making New Yorkers choose between personal space and heat stroke. We’re all hot and angry, trauma bonded from being jostled into each other’s half-naked bodies while sweat drips down our ass cracks. Nothing quite beats inhaling a wide range of body odors while trying to get to work on time.

This is being presided over by a conductor who was usually just as mad about it as we were and made that apparent by shouting at us to not only “STAND CLEAR OF THE CLOSING DOORS” but to “USE MORE THAN ONE OF THE DOORS” and “WAIT UNTIL THE NEXT TRAIN IF YOU DON’T FIT,” with the same energy as a TSA agent at LaGuardia who will yell at you to stand back if you approach them to ask a question that has already been answered.

I’m not sure whose fault this is, but I’m just going to blame Eric Adams. You can always blame the mayor of New York and then a decade after they’re out of office, they’ll get a couple of buildings named after them.

Commuting home at the end of the day, unreasonably exhausted from not doing much of anything, and then being responsible for making my own dinner seems cruel and unusual.

I now have a new respect for the people who work all day, come home to kids to raise, make dinner, and then sleep poorly, only to make a paltry sum of money the next day at work.

Like I said, I have decided that I am not meant to work for a living.

I’ve just started another year of school, so I won’t have to rejoin the workforce for another year. Corporate America will have to wait with bated breath for my return.

The Tragic Queen,

Raquel

“There’s nothing like summer in the city”
-Lin Manuel Miranda

Nothing renews my excitement and love for New York City more than being away from it for a while and then finally being able to return. That’s how I felt a few weeks ago when I arrived in New York City with my mother for my 21st birthday, after being home for about a month.

My summer was already in full swing. I started two new remote internships. You’re looking at the newest fashion writer for Fizzy Mag, a European fashion magazine for cool girls everywhere. I’ve also started writing blog posts for the female empowerment lifestyle brand: Miss EmPowHer. I am helping to form the fashionista feministas of tomorrow.

When I’m not doing that, I am spending my days doing my four favorite things in life: reading, writing, painting, and swimming. My life is the absolute worst in case you couldn’t tell. So why did I choose to leave it even for a little bit? Because New York City was calling my name, I was about to turn 21, and my friends were in the city, so it was always my dream for my first legal drink to be in the city with my girlfriends. With that in mind, my mother and I decided to beat the heat by leaving south Georgia and heading to New York City, where it actually wasn’t that much cooler.

Specifically, we stayed in Chelsea, at a hotel just down the street from the Flatiron Building. Our hotel room had a particularly magical view of the Hudson River with Lady Liberty visible on the horizon.

On day one we sat outside of the Flatiron Building, drinking and eating tacos at a nearby restaurant.

We watched people walk by with countless Harry Potter bags, enough to make you wonder “why is even acting like they just left Harry Potter World?” The answer, it turns out, was because there was a giant Harry Potter store nearby.

No, I was not too old to walk up and down the Chelsea Harry Potter store with its Dumbledore-themed spiral staircase down the center of it. There were wands, chocolate frogs, Hogwarts scarves, and other paraphernalia for sale and I showed enormous restraint in not buying anything.

We also watched two blocks of people wait outside a cafe to get served, cafe-style by pop star Conan Gray during a merch drop that coincided with the release of his second album. Aw, yes, New York City, where you can be in such close proximity to famous people just by walking down the street.

That same day, we went to The Strand bookstore, a place that always feels the love from my mother and me whenever we visit New York. I strutted around the bookstore, flipping through the books that I found interesting, seeing the books that were written by Sarah Lawrence professors, and having to pretend to look busy while my mom bought the books on my birthday list.

When we returned from The Strand, the crowd of people was still standing around to see Conan Gray, even though he had long since cleared out. We found this out by having my mom ask the only close in age person she could find in line, a forty-something-year-old-man who seemingly had his teenage daughter for the weekend.

“Conan Gray is doing a merch drop,” was his very matter-of-fact answer, followed by, “he’s a pop star.”

“I know who Conan Gray is,” I told him. I was, after all, about to be a board-certified 21-year-old.

We didn’t stick around for his merch drop (did I mention the line?) but instead we went in search of food, the first of many great meals. This was a wonderful start to my almost week long trip. Six days in New York City: John Mulaney at Madison Square Garden, a Tony-award winning Broadway show, two museums, the Strand, Central Park, the Chelsea marketplace, some super cool people, and my 21st birthday.