Working It Read Online Free PDF Page A

work early, he was in pain and I demonstrated compassion-like behavior.
    Didn’t I?
    I imagine Ethan working in a dirty, smelly kitchen, ladling out canned soup to dirty, smelly homeless people, and I suddenly feel less proud of my random act of kindness. Spreading joy and oozing compassion is just not my forte. It doesn’t come naturally to me like it does for people like Ethan and Mother Theresa and…Vivian.
    A memory sparks to life in my wine muddle brain of our trip last year to a Scottish sheep farm. One of the guests at the farm was a young mother, a cancer survivor named Lisa. Lisa admired Vivian’s shiny pink rain boots, so do you know what Vivian did? Before the end of our trip, she went into town and bought Lisa a pair of pink rubber boots. Not the cheap Hunter knock-offs, but an authentic pair of Hunter Wellingtons. Vivian’s bank account is Nicole Richie thin. I am talking sadly, perpetually anorexic. That’s just Vivian, though. A people-pleaser who lives spherically, spreading joy and pursuing her passions.
    I need to be more like Vivian and Mother Theresa. I need to live spherically. I need a purpose beyond pleasure.
    That’s it! Maybe I am without joy because I spend my days pursuing hollow pleasures. My very job is about manufacturing and marketing materialistic pleasures—beautiful but unnecessary luxuries.
    What if I just stopped? Stopped pursuing worthless goals, like raising sales, lowering the profit-loss margin, building brand awareness, and shifted my efforts to expanding L’Heure’s philanthropic pursuits.
    Last year, L’Heure posted profits in excess of eight billion dollars. That’s enough money to keep the Campbell’s flowing in every soup kitchen in the country. And L’Heure is merely one company in a vast luxury empire owned by the French billionaire Bernard Arnault. Louis Vuitton, Dior, Marc Jacobs, Givenchy, Fendi, Pucci, Donna Karan—they’re all vassals in service to our Lord and Master Arnault.
    That’s it. I have found my purpose. I will give the L’Heure Flagship Store at Union Square a new passion: philanthropy over profits. No more selling empty overpriced designer bags to empty souls just to meet sales quotas. I am going to rebrand L’Heure as the designer with heart. We could even rework the L’Heure logo by replacing the E with a big pink heart.
    We could give gently-used handbags to women reentering the workforce, shoes to Africans displaced by tribal wars, or perfume to impoverished Indians.
    I sit up, invigorated by my new sense of purpose, but the room begins to spin, so I lie back down, open my word processing app, and begin drafting a mission statement.
    An hour later, I have crafted an inspiring three thousand-word mission statement promising to put an end to rampant corporate greed and the wanton neglect of the community beyond L’Heure’s privileged clientele. My plan is simple: We donate fifteen percent of our annual proceeds to a local charity and encourage our employees to become more civic-minded through the implementation of an employee-volunteer savings program. When an employee volunteers, L’Heure pays them their hourly rate by depositing the wages directly into a retirement account.
    It is a revolutionary business model. It is socially aware and fiscally responsible. It is the sort of plan that will grab old Monsieur Henri by his tortoiseshell bifocals and force him to focus his rheumy gaze on me, Stéphanie Moreau.
    I Google San Francisco-based charities and stop when I come to Each One, Teach One, a non-profit organization “committed to eradicating financial, spiritual, and intellectual poverty in communities worldwide through the application of mentoring and vocational rehabilitation.”
    Parfait!
    I could be a mentor. Everyone in my store could be mentors. Before doubt sets in, I click the contact button, fill out the form, and tick the box next to “Yes, I want to help the downtrodden and disenfranchised by sharing my talents.”
    My