This post isn’t about Elevator Conversations (although I really want to talk about those one day, because honestly, is there any dialogue more constrained than one that MUST reach a logical and comfortable conclusion between the lobby and the eleventh floor?), but rather, about how this particular one made me realize that I don’t like it when people ask me what I do.
It’s not because I’m embarrassed or anything— publicists, like dentists, are necessary to a fully-functioning global economy. Only better, because we don’t make your gums bleed. But the inevitable followup to “I’m a publicist,” is, “a publicist for what?”, at which point I’m forced to say, “for the arts,” at which point the asker realizes that I am not Leslie Sloane Zelnick, and they ask me what the job entails. And here’s the thing: I know that I, and all the other chirpy women who work in this field, must be doing something important. I mean, we’re employed. And even though our jobs consist largely of hassling people over the phone and/or writing press releases to announce things that we ourselves do not remotely care about, even though we are considered by most to be a worthless waste of the earth’s ever-dwindling natural resources, there are A LOT of us and WE ARE ALL GETTING PAID. (Suck on that, Gawker.)
Still, the fact that my job does consist largely of hassling-and-not-caring makes it a lot harder to, y’know, qualify. So I come off boring (“I assist my clients in media outreach and messaging with the goal of securing coverage for their large scale initiatives”), or idiotic (“I, like, talk on the phone a lot?”).
Or, sometimes, I lie.
Cocktail Party Guest: What do you do?
Me: I stab people.
Which leaves me wishing, just every so often, that I had one of those jobs with a self-explanatory title. Like, “beekeeper”. Nobody asks the beekeeper what his job entails. No pressure. No judgement. Just bees… and the quiet keeping thereof.
Related: A google image search result for “I love bees”.
Unrelated, for those concerned about the breakup: I’m fine. Really. Thanks for caring about me!
4 comments:
awww... i was thinking this post was going to be about elevator conversations... i have a love/hate relationship with those.
and nobody hates publicists (unlike dentists, lawyers, bloggers...) so you're doing just fine.
I actually worked for a beekeeper briefly, and it was more interesting than it sounds. Here is not the place to tell the story; suffice it to say my hands swelled up to twice their size on the first day of work since we were not allowed to wear gloves because we might hurt the bees.
And I'm glad you're ok, I do care about you, and you're welcome.
One time, as I was working on my west-coasty east-coast organic farm, we accidentally let loose a hoard of bees that had splintered off from their constrained life in the boxy existence that was the bee hive to start their own little hippy bee commune beneath the organic hippy potatoes. Me and my bearded, edward-abbey-looking companion went running like little liberated school girls across the chemical-free non-GMO field, and daftly darted through an opening in the solar-powered electric fence in hopes of avoiding the bee revolt that would have certainly supplanted our rule and lead to a revolution on the farm that would make george orwell soil his orwellian britches...
Hi Kat, I found your blog through Hulles (hi Hulles).
I second the love/hate relationship with elevator talk, in fact my friends and I have a word for those kinds of short awkward conversations: awktalk. Awktalk is kinda fun because the more you do it, the more you realize you can pretty much say anything...people want to give you the benefit of the doubt. So in your case, as long as you say "I stab people" while you're nodding and smiling, they're just going to assume they either misheard you or don't understand. Of course there are the people that will just be a little weirded out and maybe scared (for their life).
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