Working Girl Wednesdays: "Get Ready to Be Asked If You've Had Dinner"

Welcome to Working Girl Wednesdays! Need advice on handling the complexities of the modern workplace? Well, fret no more! Whether it’s a senior partner making a move or a catty co-worker plotting for your plum position, Helen Gurley Brown’s 1964 book Sex and the Office has a solution. Every Wednesday on Glossed Over, I’ll present a new tip from the legendary editor of Cosmopolitan. Is her advice utterly ridiculous or startlingly prescient? You decide!

“The Wide, Wild, Wicked World” is waiting, and HGB is there to help with this chapter devoted to business travel. In 29 pages, she covers everything a working woman needs to know—from picking up a man on the plane to scamming your employer on the expense reports. In fact, about the only thing she doesn’t cover is the actual conducting of business. But who cares? It’s better to spend your energy sneaking past airline staff with wig boxes and other travel essentials.

I’ve got plenty on my conscience and not the least is having put everything heavy for years—pressing iron, camera, walking shoes—into a make-up case and then hiding the make-up case behind a post. After checking in, I would saunter to the post, pick up the case and tote it onto the plane unweighed. Last year I ran into a little trouble. Some ticket checker with eyes in the side of her head let me get all checked in, then said sweetly, “And now, Mrs. Brown, would you like to get your make-up bag and weigh it in?” I got the bag, of course, mumbling that I weighed only a hundred and nine pounds and felt perhaps I was entitled to a few pounds since most travelers started at about one-sixty…

Once you arrive at the hotel, she recommends approaching a handsome fellow traveler.

A dream walking lives two doors away on your floor. Wait until you know he is in his room, then put on your hat and coat, grab your purse, march right down to his room and ram your key in his door. He will come out irritated and sputtering “What’s going on here?” Compare his room number with the key in your hand and say, “Oh, good heavens, how stupid of me.” Then get ready to be asked if you’ve had dinner.

Next week: The dirt on employer-funded graft. Get set for a lecture, though; HGB warns that “[operating] like a South American dictator…hurts inside”!

Comments

[nonlineargirl]

This all feels very much in line with the episodes of Mad Men I've been watching.