Meeting Your Boss

All publishing companies want different background experiences for their Editors’ curriculum vitae. One company wants an Editor to have prior teaching experience (no publishing knowledge required). Another wants prior field sales representative experience.

Because most of our Acquisition Editors come from a position as a sales representative, they usually work off-site from wherever they settled down for their sales territory. My boss works out of his house in Colorado.

Although he is responsible for my maturation at the company, we have never met face to face. Until now…

My boss, Carl, flew in for a story reading meeting. Why wouldn’t they just have a teleconference for this meeting, you may ask? Well, I mean it is a very important meeting where editors and marketing managers have to make up a story line about their book lists and sales plans to present to the Publisher and Marketing VP.

My calculus books are like Batman and next year their sales will take over Gotham City, leaving our competitor The Joker in the dust. You know a meeting to express a five year sales plan through comic book characters or fairy tales…

I learned quickly that meeting your boss for the first time is like going on a first date. (In my case, a blind date.) You want to be reserved and polite, yet make a good impression. And in some ways your stomach ties up in knots because your mind starts to wonder… What if he doesn’t like me? What if I’m not good enough?

Carl and our Marketing Manager, Brenda, offered to take me and Brenda’s assistant, Michelle, out for lunch.

We left at prime lunch time and the restaurant was packed. Luckily, we assistants have mastered the art of reservation making. Michelle made a reservation at Thai Basil.

It ended up being one of those restaurants where you were required to take your shoes off before entering the private-room booth. (I’ve never seen this at a Thai restaurant before and only know of one Japanese restaurant that does this.)

I was wearing nylons, so removing my shoes left me nearly barefoot. Carl was embarrassed and at first he refused, but then Brenda made him do it.

There is nothing that builds an appetite more than the smell of feet in a contained area. It was even worse than the guy who thinks it’s ok to take his shoes off in an airplane. Even Janeane Garofalo has a comedy bit about guys’ feet in mandles (you know, guy sandals).

My advice is if you’re meeting your boss for the first time, like you would consider for a first date, find a neutral restaurant. Do not aim for anything exotic, but just in case the choice is not up to you, be prepared... with socks.