How to Lose Your Job From Sexual Harassment in 33 Easy Steps
1. Land a job. At a new online magazine for approximately the same salary you earned in 1992, but whatever. You have bills to pay, MRIs to undergo, kids to feed, you are doing this solo, and at this point you have no idea that the company’s offer of $34,000 a year is a fraction of the $200,000 a man in your same position later tells you he was making.
2. Have your first story out of the gate, about how hard it is to get a job when you’re a middle-aged woman, go so viral that it gets picked up by others and lands you on TV and on the New York Times online op-ed page while simultaneously, in that same paper, sparking a mean-spirited backlash. Immediately get a raise, to $80,000.
3. Receive a Facebook message out of the blue from Ken Kurson, a Big Important Male Editor at the New York Observer, saying he loves your work and wants you to consider writing for him instead. Push him off for six months, as you’re under contract.
