Excerpt from Spinning Brightly: No Place Like Home

I’d later learn that there were three distinct camps of people at HGTV: capable people who were eager to advance the business; incompetent people who didn’t care about anything but a paycheck; and a vast swath of people in-between who were desperately looking for direction and purpose. Vikki was solidly in the first camp and was looking for a competent colleague to help her paddle the boat.

As she wished me luck and disappeared, I suddenly felt really good about my chances for landing the role. Her kindness had given me that little boost of confidence that I needed.

My first interview was with Bob Flanders. Bob was a 50-something guy who always came across to me as scared and uncertain. His sickeningly southern accent still makes my skin crawl when I think about the sound of it. I’m not a bigot when it comes to accents because an accent is a key part of a person’s identity. Hell, I have a West Virginia accent that gets stronger when I’m excited, angry or after a few drinks. It’s who I truly am. There’s just something about that antebellum southern accent that grates on me when paired with brazen hypocrisy. It’s just the sort of gee golly butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth camouflage that sets off my bullshit meter.

Bob was well known for his stint leading Cartoon Network and its Adult Swim programming block. He stepped down amid considerable controversy in 2007 when a network marketing campaign in Boston backfired and turned into an all-out bomb scare for the city. I respected him for the publicity stunt. It showed that he had taken a stand for something creative and interesting at least once in his life. Those days were long gone, though. He’d come to the place where all creativity came to die and safe bets ruled the day.

I’d already met with Bob and his boss at a breakfast in New York a few weeks earlier. Bob said all of the right things in his attempts to woo me to the network. Unfortunately, he said them to my chest. Bob was seemingly obsessed with my breasts. From the first time I met him, he struggled to make eye contact with me and instead had a gaze that was perpetually fixed on my bosom. I developed DD boobs almost overnight in the sixth grade. I was used to men leering at them. I was not accustomed to guys ogling them in a professional context. Despite all of their eccentricities, my male peers at The Outdoor Channel didn’t treat my chest like a sideshow attraction.

Bob couldn’t seem to help himself. I anticipated this based on our first meeting and selected my interview outfit even more carefully than usual. I wore a boatneck patterned sleeveless St. John dress, a black cardigan and plain, black two-and-a-half-inch Christian Louboutin heels. I remember going for the librarian look. Think stylish librarian, not sexy librarian.

In hindsight my self-consciousness about what I wore was complete bullshit. I was already conservative in my fashion choices. Nothing I could do would discourage Bob from his bad behavior. I had unconsciously bought into the misogynist myth of a woman tempting a man with her appearance.

Here I was, a 37 year-old woman, questioning if I was covered up enough to prevent some lame asshole from eyeballing my breasts at an executive job interview. This is the rubbish that women deal with every damned day. Bob’s salacious stares should have been an early warning alarm on the bold hypocrisy that prevailed at HGTV. But I was too distracted by the shiny opportunity to excel. I was still firmly on the status train, allowing my insecurities to dictate a twisted idea of success.

The interview with Bob went well enough. Memorably, at one point he asked me if my parents watched the network. I thought it was a weird question, but I understood the intent of it. It was one of those perfunctory questions people ask to verify that you’re like them. These sorts of questions are often posed under the subterfuge of cultural fit. They’re the reason you don’t see many non-white people roaming the halls of HGTV and places like it.

Being an abused kid gives you an unparalleled ability to read people. It can be the difference between a slap and no slap or a minor skirmish versus World War III. I knew that Bob wanted me to assuage him. He wanted to know that I was in his faction: white, privileged and vacuous. So, I lied. I plastered a smile on my face and said that my parents watched his boring network. All the while, I was thinking what a simpleton he was. He would have been aghast if I had answered truthfully:

My parents? Watch this lame ass network? [laughing hysterically] Fuck no. They barely know this network exists. My parents have never even owned a house let alone cared about the condition of the one they live in. We lived in thirteen different homes growing up, like squatters. They all sucked. My family thinks yardwork is punishment, home improvement is using Drano and home décor is punching a hole in the wall after a bender.

But wise ass humor and honesty doesn’t land mid six-figure jobs at companies run by pedestrian douche bags. So, I told him what he wanted to hear and was off to the next interview.

This one was with Chris Powell, one of the few Black employees in the holding company’s executive ranks. Chris was the Executive Vice President of Human Resources. Confoundingly, the company had an endless number of HR executives. Chris was pretty high on the food chain and was not homegrown like most of the other people in HR. He’d worked outside of HGTV and Knoxville and had a broader world view that came across instantly. He was refreshingly frank and open, even giving me a diplomatic tutorial on what it would be like to work in the HGTV culture. He didn’t paint an overly rosy picture. Another warning sign. Here was a smart and rational guy who didn’t look like everyone else previewing the crap I would have to contend with as an employee at America’s darling home network.

One of my last interviews was with Judy Hall. Judy was the head of HR for the Home Category which included HGTV, DIY Network and all of the related digital properties. Little did I know that she would be my constant tormenter for the next three years. Judy had this perpetually tired, hang dog look and lectured people like a cross between a security guard and a bitter junior high school gym teacher.

Again, her Tennessee accent and stridence in whatever she said made me want pluck my eyelashes out one by one. She was one of the first employees at HGTV and had started as a receptionist. I know that because she told me. And everyone. Over and over again. I worked as an an administrative assistant at a big health insurer to put myself through grad school. I was proud of my climb too.

But Judy's rags to riches story wasn't about pride. It was more about her brimming insecurities. My interview with her was fine, as it’s not like she asked any tough or thoughtful questions about my experience or vision for the network. As I would come to learn, she really didn’t know much about the business of television and didn't care to learn. She was more about ensuring the 'right people' walked the hallowed halls of HGTV. She asked me about innocuous things like my spouse and whether or not I had kids. She wanted to sell me on Knoxville's family friendly appeal, a not so cloak and dagger attempt at making sure I liked southern Christianity and all of the banal social activities it entails.

Like Bob, she just wanted to make sure I would fit into the coterie of mediocre, upper middle-class whiteness that she had helped curate. In hindsight, I’m sad to say that I passed muster. I got the job and was about to embark on the worst career experience of my life, a turning point and a blessing in disguise that would try me and ultimately give me clarity on what I wanted out of work and life.