Daddy's a Suit

I might have ruined his entire day

“What does Mommy do?” my best friend asked my then two-year-old son. “Mommy’s a doctor,” my son replied. “And what does Daddy do?” he asked. “Daddy’s a suit.”

My friend taught him to say that, and it’s true. I was a suit. As a recent MBA grad, I wore suits every day and worked downtown in a marketing role. But I’d spent a lot of time around suits before that, because of my mom. She was also a suit. She was one helluva suit (she’s retired now). She’d had a horrible childhood, and a pretty rough young adulthood, but at the age of 40 she became a stockbroker and through a combination of genius, sales skill, and genuine likability and caring for others was immensely successful. Corner-office-vice-president-title-burst-through-glass-ceilings-in-a-male-dominated-industry kind of successful. I wasn’t cut out for that type of business, but she was always an inspiration to me. She still is, and I know that a lot of my success as an author resulted from her example.

One day during the lunch break, while in my suit, I was at a food court waiting in line at a Chinese fast-food place. It was 2000, and back then some suits liked to loudly talk on their cell phones in public because they thought it made them look important. There was a guy, who was also wearing a suit, directly in front of me yacking away on his phone, and I heard him say my mother’s name. He was giving off douchenugget vibes and said something about “the goddamn [my mom’s name] deal.”

My ears perked right up, and I wanted to hear what he would say next, but then the call came to an end. I leaned to toward him in a conspiratorial manner and repeated my mom’s name back to him, adding, “I’ve heard that name before. What’s her story?”

He looked around furtively, then closed the gap even more and said in a somewhat quiet voice, “She’s a fucking dope is who she is. A broker who slept her way to the top.”

Oh wow was this guy in for a bad couple of minutes.

“Oh, her!” I loudly exclaimed. “I know who you’re talking about. Except I heard that [my mom’s name] isn’t a fucking dope who slept her way to the top like YOU said. I heard that she’s actually really smart. I heard she takes great care of her clients and that she earned that corner office. I’ve also heard lots of losers in the bullpen whining about her because they’ll never be nearly as successful as she is, so they make up lies about her.”

The guy looked like he wanted to crawl into a tray of Chinese food and hide under the Shanghai noodles. “Listen I didn’t mean—”

I interrupted him. “I also heard that the guys in her office who look up to her and seek her advice end up being way more successful than the ones who complain about her and make up lies.” At that point he decided he wasn’t really hungry and bailed on the line, but I wasn’t done. This fucker had dared to go after my MOM, one of the most amazing women you could ever hope to meet who was also a celebrated business icon in the city who gave back to the community. He briskly began to walk away, and I left the line as well and followed, calling after him. “What’s your name? Maybe I can arrange a face-to-face and you can get some advice on how to be successful like her!” He picked up the pace to a near sprint and so I let him go, figuring I’d made my point.

I found that I’d sweat through my dress shirt and was in danger of soaking my suit jacket, and so I took a moment. I then turned back toward the line for Chinese food, and the woman who had been behind me gestured, holding my place. I then realized that people were staring at me, many of them smiling. I began to sweat again.

I got back in line and the woman behind me said, “That was pretty amazing.”

“Thanks,” I said. “So is my mom.”

I did learn a lot about selling from her. She likes that I used those skills to promote my sweary history books. And she would totally approve of me using this story to convince you to buy a copy or three of “On This Day in History Sh!t Went Down.”

My mom says go get it.