Chapter 9: The Mojito Mixer

My boss asked me to host an industry event. I couldn't even get people to come to my birthday party.

In front of my desk at WowTag was a poster that showed an adorable bunny rabbit character about to be eaten by a bear, above text reading: Innovate or Die.

“I put it there to motivate Daichi,” the thirty-year-old CEO, Dan, said bitterly. I met Daichi during my interview a few weeks earlier. I was under the impression that we would be teammates on a two-person sales team, when in reality I was being hired to replace him. As Dan walked me through the rest of the office (a WeWork space about the size of a closet) he adorned our conversation with grievances about Daichi--he came from a B2C background and sucked at B2B sales, he went on the ESPN website all the time and didn’t do his work, he bolded words in his emails and it looked tacky. 

Dan wouldn’t be my direct boss--my direct boss reported to Dan, and his name was Hiroto. We all sat together at one giant desk. Everyone at WowTag was Japanese except for me, because it was an offshoot of a larger Japanese company. Dan spoke with an English accent and had an English name, because he grew up in England, but he was born in Japan like everyone else. I didn’t mind being the only non-Japanese person on the team, even if it meant there would be long meetings taking place in Japanese where I was expected to attend but couldn’t participate. What I did mind, however, was that I was fairly underpaid, making exactly what I made at my previous job if not slightly less when factoring in bonuses. The only reason I took the role at WowTag was because I believed (accurately) that my former employer (GameRich, from Chapter 7) was going out of business. WowTag might have been just as unstable--we sold an extremely niche ad-tracking technology exclusively to US-based advertisers who wanted to market in Japan– but I wasn’t yet at the point in my career where “what the company sells” was that important.

It was a job, WeWork had free lime water, and although Dan came off as a bit of a jerk, Hiroto seemed like one of the kindest people I could ever dream to work with. Hiroto was in his forties, which was almost unheard of in the San Francisco adtech startup world, and I liked the idea of working directly under someone with experience.

I met Aiko next, a woman a few years older than I was. She was the office manager, but I think she was meant to represent all things administrative. She was the only other woman in the office, which would have been more damning if the office had more people in it at all. It was pretty much just me, Dan, Hiroto, Aiko, and then Kazuki, a skinny male account manager in his thirties who didn’t speak a lot of English, and mostly interfaced with Japanese clients.

I knew I stuck out, culturally and physically, as the only non-Japanese person in the office, but Dan might have been more of a sore thumb than I was. Instead of casual hoodies and jeans like the rest of the team, he wore costumey versions of what a child might expect a young CEO to wear--fedoras, pastel polo shirts with pocket squares, shorts with plaid ribbon belts, designer loafers. He was a broad, imposing presence with a deep, booming voice. He wasn’t as polite as Hiroto, Aiko and Kazuki, who did everything with a certain level of formality, decorum and respect for others. Dan behaved more like your stereotypical English lad in a Burberry tracksuit who might start a car fire after a Manchester United loss. In fact, he had two computers at his desk: one for work and one for soccer. He would routinely smash his fist down on the table and curse because of something happening on the soccer screen. On my second day of work, he invited his friends over to get drunk (Wework provided free beer) and stopped me in the hallway to tell me I had a “big ass for a white girl.” (I was horrified that he made this comment at work, but a bit flattered, because I was trying to grow my glutes at the time.) Then he told me I should wear dresses more often, lamenting that he didn’t understand why so many young girls wear pants. 

You’re probably wondering why I continued working another day at WowTag. I cared about security more than I cared about anything else, and given my previous experiences at equally unchained startups, I didn’t think his comment was that strange. Inappropriate, yes, but nothing that would warrant making myself unemployed. 

On my third day at WowTag, I was late because I needed to fill a prescription at CVS and something happened where they magically had no record of me in the system and had to call my doctor. They told me it would only take fifteen minutes, but I worried it might be longer. To make sure nobody at work thought I had bailed in an attempt to flee from Dan, I texted Hiroto and let him know. He said he understood and to take my time.

When I got to the office, I was an hour late. Dan was furious. He was propped up against my desk with his arms crossed, as if he had posed himself there for the full hour, waiting for me to return.

“You do realize it’s your third day and you’re an hour late?”

“I know. I’m sorry, but I texted Hiroto.”

“You did,” Hiroto said thoughtfully. “But you didn’t say it would be an hour. An hour is unacceptable.”

“I’m sorry, I had to get my prescription filled. I can’t miss a day of my medication.”

“It’s okay,” Dan said. “We have a solution for things like this.” He took a hefty bottle of Jack Daniels out of his desk and placed it on the table in front of me. “If you’re late, you take a double shot.”