“You want me to tell you your interests?” Mattie laughed as she looked up from across the cubicle. “I don’t know. Wait, why don’t you know your own interests?”
“I’m filling out a fake profile with my information so I can test the coding I used for the updated personal interests section. Just help me out here. What do I do that’s actually interesting?”
The last thing I wanted to do was put up an actual dating profile. I didn’t want to date anyone, and I was certain of that. But the errors were bugging me and in order to get the coding to work, I wanted to test it out on a page that I could manage.
Working in information technology was harder than I had ever expected. I learned something new every day, though, and I liked the challenge of my work. There weren’t too many jobs out there where you could literally reprogram a whole company’s livelihood and then hang out in the free lunch room over a mocha cappuccino.
Dating the Rich was a fabulous place to work. We had free food everywhere in the building. We could take as much time off as we wanted, although we didn’t get paid for it, so I never used it. We also had a gym downstairs and a massage therapist that came to the office once a month.
The only thing I didn’t like was my current supervisor, but those guys turned over so quickly that I knew someone else would take his position soon and I just had to tough it out for a bit.
“Hmmm, besides horribly boring art shows? I don’t know, you do a lot of things. Volunteering, working with your son and his school, all your running stuff…can you put that stuff in there?”
“Yep, I’ll add my love of cat sweaters, too, just for fun.”
“Ha, yep, I’m sure that would totally get the millionaires to love your profile. That’s just the type of woman they are looking for: lonely cat lady.”
“It’s not a profile to actually meet guys. I just need to test if everything is working, I’ll make it private again soon,” I said as I flipped my monitor around to show Mattie the profile I had set up so far. “You know, I swear I’ve fixed this error a dozen times and every time I think it’s totally good, I log in and it’s not.”
“If you don’t want people to respond to that profile, you shouldn’t have put that amazing picture of you on there. Damn, Del; that’s hot. Where was that taken?”
“On the beach after Spencer passed away. Spencer’s parents took me and Connor on a vacation. They are truly the best in-laws in the world. I’m so lucky to have them.”
“That is one kick-ass body you’ve got there, lady. I’d kill to look that good in a bikini. You should just walk around in a bikini. I mean, if I looked like that in a swimsuit, I’d just wear the damn thing to work.”
“It’s called running, Mattie. I ask you to come with me all the time and you always refuse. I’m only in shape because I used running as my only form of therapy after Spencer passed away.”
“Oh, I don’t want to exercise. I meant I’d actually kill someone if they’d just give me some abs,” she laughed loudly at her own joke. Mattie’s laugh boomed through our office and soon everyone had turned their heads toward us to see what was going on.
I loved her humor, though. Having her there with me over the years had been a big source of inspiration. She could turn even the dreariest of days into one where we were both laughing so hard we were crying. It was a special talent, that was for sure.
“Get back to work,” our angry manager grumbled as he stuck his head out of his office.
“One of these days he’s going to move on and we will get a decent manager,” I said softly. “I really thought he’d be sick of this job by now.”
“I know. I mean, what kind of man is that angry all the time? He is working at a match-making website. It’s not like we have a super stressful job or anything like that. You’d think that some sort of happiness would be a requirement to get a middle management job around here. All of the upper management seems so happy all the time.”
“Maybe he’s grumpy because he works here. You know what I’m saying? He needs a girlfriend and working here and being reminded that he doesn’t have one just makes him sad.”
We both giggled as we turned back to our computers and continued working. No matter what code I put into the social interest section, I continued to get errors throughout the morning. I reloaded several versions of the code and even read the entire code line by line as I tried to fix my error. It was exhausting.
By the time lunch rolled around, I was in the middle of a pure frustration fit. Coding for our clients’ profiles was my main area of work. I had to fix this error before I could continue on to test any other issues we were having. As I was about to walk away from my desk for lunch, an instant message window popped up on my screen.
IM from Brandon: Do you accept?
“Oh, Mattie, I’ve got a guy messaging me,” I laughed. “See what happens when I put an amazingly small bikini photo on my profile?”
“Is he cute? If he’s cute, you need to answer him. Remember, these guys are rich. You need a rich guy in your life.”
“It doesn’t matter. This is a fake account; I’m not going to accept the message. I don’t need anyone in my life. I’m very happy exactly where I am.”
“Del, it’s not really all that fake. It’s your picture and your details. Just answer him. Is he cute? And, yes, you do need a rich handsome guy in your life. Hell, I need one in my life. Answer him – for me. Take one for the team, Delilah!”
“Yes, his profile looks like he is acceptably handsome.”
“Let me see,” she said as she jumped up and came around to my desk. “Oh, wow, Del; he’s really handsome. You’ve got to talk to him. Message him, or accept his message, or whatever you need to do. Let’s make this happen.”
I looked around in fear that our manager would come walking past. I didn’t want to get caught using the instant messaging app on our dating site while I was supposed to be working on fixing our problems. He already yelled at us enough for no reason at all, so I didn’t want to give him an actual reason to yell at me.