This was the hellishly hot week I was let go.

It was so hot and muggy outside which was dreadful, but they blasted the air conditioning so high in the office which was even worse. I was freezing as hell. And, the amount of work that was expected from me, the work that just kept piling on and the fast pace which included my boss asking just about every hour, “How much have you done?” and “How much more can you do?”

FASHION COPYWRITER BY ELLEN BLOOMENSTEIN 34THPARALLEL MAGAZINE ISSUE 63

This was the hellishly hot week I was let go. I was a copywriter in fashion. I had been with the company only three months but they had unreasonable expectations, asking me to write 65 clothing descriptions in a day, plus their promotional emails.

The company, Martha & Laura, was a plus-size fashion brand that catered to African-American women. I am Caucasian Jew in my 40s, pretty much ancient in the world of fashion, but Martha & Laura catered to an older customer, so I thought I might have a real chance at this job. 

My previous job was for a company called Metropolis where they made cheap clothes in the latest trends. I thought of it as “throw-away fashion”. I specialized in emails and did some descriptions, but they didn’t renew my freelance contract and hired someone younger for less money—at least that’s what I heard from my former co-workers. 

I visited one of Martha & Laura’s shops in Harlem, gone to Sophie’s, a soul food restaurant uptown for brunch, and attended a service at the Abyssinian Baptist Church. In other words, I immersed myself in the culture. 

I was interviewed at Martha & Laura’s by about a dozen people, each of them telling me how wonderful Martha & Laura was. (Some of them said that they didn’t like my previous employer Metropolis, but although Metropolis hadn’t renewed my contract I liked working there.) 

I told the interviewers I liked the individual attention customers got in the Martha & Laura store and how lovely the culture was. Despite my age and their lack of respect for Metropolis, I was offered the job.

In the first three days I was ready to quit. First off, it was a heatwave. It was so hot and muggy outside which was dreadful, but they blasted the air conditioning so high in the office which was even worse. One employee, Julie, a large and pretty African-American woman who sat next to me turned on a portable heater she had for such occasions below her desk. I was freezing as hell. And, the amount of work that was expected from me, the work that just kept piling on and the fast pace which included my boss asking just about every hour, “How much have you done?” and “How much more can you do?” I was writing furiously for their website. The clothing kept coming, the descriptions had to keep being written.