Farewell to Amanda Woodward and My Corporate Life

This is from the Melrose Place reboot but good ole Mandy is still up to her old antics        

When I was a young teen (or tween as they are now called) I really wanted to be a "corporate woman". I would watch Melrose Place and dreamed of the day I too could wear completely business appropriate mini skirts to the office. I wanted to be Amanda Woodward, not the psycho b*tch part (she was that right?), but the sexy “business” part. I wanted to live in a big city and climb that corporate ladder! Examining this now, I do not remember at all what Amanda’s actual job was, or anything much about her character beyond her work wardrobe, so it is clear to me that her clothes were the reason I was inspired by her.

Fast forward 10 or so years and I got my very own corporate job! Thankfully I learned before I started that a short skirt and sky high heels aren’t actually office appropriate, but none the less, I was  happy to be in the corporate setting. At the start I LOVED my job. I worked for a home furnishings company as a planning coordinator who was responsible for entering orders and being the liaison between our vendors and planners. Everyone on our team was under 30 and my boss was the best ever. Seriously I could go on and on about how cool my first boss was…though he hasn’t been my boss for years we have remained close. So close that I now have his last name and we even share a child. Yes, my husband is my old boss (but that’s another story for another day). Examining this now, I think I loved seeing my crush (which was all he was to start with) and friends (over half that team was at our wedding) every day more than the actual job.

Time passed and beyond one promotion, I wasn’t really climbing that ladder. My second and last position with the company was the assistant buyer for the outlet division. The job function that took up the majority of my time was to decide what damaged or discontinued furniture was going to go to which stores based on distribution center on hands and store needs. Sounds fun right? I mean that was probably Amanda Woodward’s job too, or at least some other tv show’s main character’s job because the job description just oozes sex appeal.  While I never wanted the business to do badly, I didn’t get personally excited if it was doing well. Banged up or discontinued furniture… I was not losing sleep or having joy over that.  Our business was thriving, and that furniture that I was in charge of made up for more than half the revenue, yet I got zero personal gratification from it. But there was a recession, the job paid me well enough, I had friends in the office who made me laugh (though hubs moved to another company years ago) and I got to leave around 5 o'clock every day so I stayed in my boring job.

Fast forward a few years to my maternity leave.  This is probably the only time that I will be grateful for not getting a promotion or raise. Combine the high price of child care in San Francisco, my not amazing salary, lack of passion for my job, and great passion for being a mother and you get the perfect recipe for a stay at home mom.

There are some women who always dreamed of being a stay at home mom. That was never my dream. I always intended to be Amanda Woodward but once I got to the actual corporate world, I realized it was simply not a good fit for me. I have no filter and more importantly no business will ever be a priority or passion to me when I have an infant at home to think about, and thank god my family is in the financial place where I don’t need to work. My life took a different path than I thought it would. I wasn’t meant to be Amanda Woodward, I was meant to be a mom, and I truly could not be happier.