Quinn was sitting at her desk in a knee-length dress with a blazer, zoned out, reminiscing about the day she walked into Hunter’s office to tell him she had landed a job at a news station. Digital marketing was huge, and everyone wanted a piece of the pie. Including news stations that had historically depended on television broadcasts as their primary metric for views and ads.
Not anymore.
Millennials were getting their news online, and WGT25 knew they had to step up if they didn’t want to be left behind. That’s where Quinn came in. She was hired as a digital marketing associate, where she helped manage partnership ads on the station’s social accounts and website. They were also growing a new line of business building websites for small and midsize businesses. This market was kind of a test to see if other stations could build out this type of business.
This was Quinn’s first time working in a conservative space. All the women wore dresses and heels. All the men had on nice shirts and slacks. The vibe was much different from the startup feel of the internship she had experienced previously. You would never walk past a corner office and see a VP meditating during lunch like Hunter did as a daily ritual.
To make matters even more stuffy, a crazy president had just been elected, and everyone in the office seemed to be quietly cheering, but it was hard to tell. What Quinn could tell was that the energy felt heavy, and she was disappointed with where the country was going. The newly elected president didn’t have a political background, and from Quinn’s perspective, chaos seemed to follow him everywhere.
It was strange working in an environment where people were semi-publicly conservative, especially after spending four safe years at an HBCU. Her new coworkers would say things like, “We have to support whoever is elected, regardless of party affiliation,” or, “Honestly, he isn’t all bad. I agree with him about blank, blank.”
But what made things even more emotionally excruciating was not knowing for sure who stood where. So Quinn would just sit quietly in her cube, trying to focus on work and not on how the country seemingly was going to shit.
There were fun moments at the station, though.
Local celebrities, athletes, and other interesting people occasionally came through, giving Quinn access to people and spaces she wasn’t accustomed to. She took pictures. She got to hang around the news set. She even had professional headshots taken at the station that she would use as her LinkedIn photos for years.
She was still trying to establish herself as a digital professional, and she was using everything she could get her hands on to do it. That included creating opportunities for herself outside of WGT25. Quinn had started her own little digital marketing company in hopes of finding private clients. She was already helping businesses with websites and digital marketing at work. Why not try to find some clients of her own?
At home, she was working on something completely different.
Quinn and a friend she was dating, who happened to be an app developer, were designing an event app called Slide In. He handled the development while Quinn worked on the concept and designs. He introduced her to sprints and told her that she was basically functioning as the product manager for the app.
They worked in sprints, mapping out what they wanted to accomplish and iterating on the product as they went. Quinn didn’t really think of it as career development at the time. She was just building something cool with someone she trusted.
Maybe she trusted him a little too much.
Once Quinn completed the designs, he locked her out of the project and used the work for his own portfolio.
Just like that.
Quinn was pissed, but she also didn’t know enough yet to protect herself. There was no contract. No formal agreement around ownership. Nothing documenting what belonged to whom. She had assumed that because they were building it together, it belonged to both of them.
Lesson learned.
What he couldn’t take was the experience Quinn had gained from building it. She continued using what she learned from the project to prove that she had experience in the digital space.
Back at WGT25, Quinn had no idea where her boss, Bob, stood politically, but what she did know was that he put a lot of effort into training Quinn and her peer, who was a white guy around her age. Bob treated them kind of like his kids. Always looking out for them. Always guiding them.
Every Friday, Bob would take Quinn and her peer to a local pancake house to host their morning meetings, where they discussed their accounts and next steps. Quinn was crushing it when it came to building digital content and strategy for the accounts she managed, but she was struggling with the sales portion of the job.
She struggled so much that she often felt extremely depleted. The base pay for the role wasn’t enough without earning commission from digital onboarding sales. It was nice to say, “I do digital marketing and sales at WGT25,” but it didn’t mean much when you couldn’t pay your bills.
Quinn wasn’t the only one struggling.
One of her two roommates had actually picked up a second job at a kind of around-the-way restaurant whose target customer seemed to be older gay men. Her roommate told her they were looking for more hosts. Quinn had restaurant experience from college, so she applied and got hired on the spot.
Quinn had never worked at such an eclectic place. She had coworkers whose lives seemed like they were from a different planet. Every Sunday, drag queens would come in after their shows and celebrate with their community. The job helped bring Quinn closer to her roommate and expanded her social network.
Now, back to WGT25.
Eventually, Quinn’s digital skills weren’t enough. Bob called her into the office with HR. She could feel sweat dripping down her back as she walked the long hallway to HR. She didn’t know why she was being called in, but she was sure it wasn’t for a promotion. Maybe they were going to place her on a new team where her skills could shine more.
Turns out, she was getting laid off because she wasn’t producing enough sales.
It was an out-of-body experience. It felt like the room was spinning. Tears started falling down her face as she watched the lips of the HR manager and Bob move. All Quinn could think about was how hard she had worked to finally get her foot in the door, only to be shut out.
How would she pay the bills she could already hardly pay?
Would she be able to get a better job?
She walked back to her desk after the meeting to gather her things. They told her she only had a few moments before security would escort her out. It felt dehumanizing. She didn’t have much to collect from her desk. She left her badge and laptop behind. Once she was in her car, she continued to cry in disbelief. One part of her was relieved. She hated the sales aspect of the job. She just wanted to focus on building and marketing websites and businesses.
At least she had learned how cold sales worked, though.
Quinn didn’t know it yet, but the part of the job she hated most would become the reason she landed her next one.