The Cynical Career Counselor Explains Your Future as a

Personal Shopper

Oh hi there--sit down. I remember hearing your name somewhere recently--oh yeah, aren't you the girl who wrote excused herself from her history final because of Lululemon's preferred customer invitation only sale? What kind of job are you interested in? Shopping--for a living? One of those department store purchasers or... Oh, I see. A personal shopper, huh? Well, I think I can figure it out:

First of all, it's not really a job that's easy to train for. It's a small demographic that hires personal shoppers, so you have to kind of seduce someone into it, unless, of course, they've already got one, then you just have to frame that person for theft and steal their job--but either way, you have to cultivate a sort of friendship with the rich person who's in need of someone to do the terribly onerous task of shopping for them.

Fortunately--and I just pulled your grade transcript up on the computer--you will use instinct rather than skills or academic training to pull this off. You'll need to get into a store where the rich shop--rich females, preferably young and connected or married to someone wealthy.

Don't go for the first wife, either. She's likely the one who will actually bear the children and want to raise them herself--so she won't be hiring anyone to buy her playpens or potties. You want to go somewhere the trophy wives prowl--so probably a high end jewelry store or sports car dealership.

You won't get in on selling the cars--high end lots don't hire kids like you right out of high school--but you can catch on as a receptionist or insurance counter girl or something. You see, you will be the one who does the paperwork for leases, rather than sales, because chances are the rich corporate types will be hiding their mistress's cars in a monthly expense account. It's too much money to blow on buying it outright when they're still shifting your assets to hide them from their current wife's future team of divorce attornies.

Of course, the "wives in the wings" will test their sugar daddies by insisting on a new car every few months, so you'll get to know them really well. Soon they're dropping by the lot to scope out their next convertible and taking you out for lunch where they appreciate that you listen without judging them.

The mistress's lot is often a lonely one--probably their family isn't fully aware of their less than savoury pursuit of some married executive twice their age, and it isn't something that they're all that proud of, if they stop shopping long enough to do a little self-examination. I guess that's why they rarely stop shopping.

Lunches turn to invitations to the spa or the tanning salon, and that's when you'll hone in on the one or two prospects who have the right qualities to help you realize your career dream. The woman you want to work for should be close to your size, and utterly selfish.

Then the field narrows down to one. She--your new "best friend"--even invites you to her wedding. You've wisely made it clear that you have no social life--even if you do--and she doesn't wonder why an attractive girl like you can't get dates. She's so self-absorbed, she just assumes everyone else's life is a pathetic shell compared to hers. She even arranges a date for you to bring to the wedding.

Don't argue that point. You see, the guy she assigns you for the wedding is her 'boy on the side', and you'll be the convenient cover for her to bring him to all manner of social gatherings. You'll pretend not to notice it, of course, until you're so immersed in it that it becomes an unspoken understanding.

Julie, your boss, won't find married life all that happy or fulfilling, so she'll try to silence the voice of her self-doubts in an orgy of spending. She suggests you go on her payroll full time, and the two of you settle on 'personal shopper' as a title--her wealthy husband is busy with the demands of his high powered career, and since he can't give her much time--or at least he doesn't seem to want to--he happily hires you as someone to keep her out of the house.

She begins sneaking off to meet Ricardo, her boyfriend, a couple of afternoons a week, and you provide an invaluable cover--she meets you just before she heads home to provide her with the bags of high-end clothing and the time-stamped receipts that seem to verify her alibis.

You know her tastes, and soon you're deliberately buying a few things she won't quite like, but you love, knowing she'll toss them your way--things you'd never be able to afford even though she's paying you twice what your job at the car dealership did.

After a year of this shallow but fast-paced career, you begin to suffer from stirrings of your long-dormant conscience. You arrive at her home one afternoon to drop off the latest purchases, and you find her husband unexpectedly at home, quietly weeping in the breakfast nook. You try to sneak out, but he's heard you and calls you over.

The next hour he pours out the sorrow that has overwhelmed him almost from the first moment of his loveless marriage. He has been aware of the affair for months, and has chosen to ignore it, but Julie's increasing brazenness in her illicit relationship with Ricardo has destroyed his self-esteem and driven him to the verge of suicide. He confesses to you that he feels he has made a mess of his life, and somehow your feeble words of support encourage him.

He invites you to meet for coffee the next day, and you worry at first that he's simply playing you into the the role of his next mistress, but to your almost disappointment, you discover he just needs an sympathetic ear, particularly one who understands the wife who is causing him so much pain. You, in turn, find yourself growing more protective of him and find it more and more difficult not to blast Julie for her callous behavior.

Julie is oblivious to the fact that her infidelity is known to her husband, but she senses that he is less enamoured of her company--you've begun to displace her as he shares all his intimate thoughts with you and begins to protectively distance himself from the wife he knows he must lose. Julie, though, can't understand the coolness in her husband, and rather than believe he might know of her affair, she assumes it is because she has gained six pounds since the wedding.

She notches up her already manic diet and exercise regime, and as her 'best friend' and lackey, forces you to join with her in five mile runs and brutal pilates sessions. When you lag behind, she laughs at you and when she drops a dress size, she gives you dozens of outfits which she rejects as her 'fat clothes'.

You lose it at the end of a particularly gruelling mountain run, and after throwing up your low-carb breakfast, essentially ask her how she can live with herself.

This first example of backbone in your relationship with her is not received well. She explodes at you--in reality shrieking a rebuttal to her own conscience--and fires you on the spot. Three hours after you get home, she calls you and begs you to come back to work for her--perhaps fearing that your knowledge of the details of her affair is more dangerous without her having you under control as an employee.

You mumble something about feeling hurt by what she says, and she immediately responds with a 20% raise, which you grudgingly accept.

Still, something has changed in your relationship, and this new dynamic includes her watching you more closely. She arranges one day to have you called to the phone over a complicated dress alteration problem just as you have logged into your email. While you're out of the room she finds a poignant message from her husband thanking you for being his 'rock', and concludes you are either having an affair with him, or very close to doing so.

You aren't so sure she is entirely wrong. She confronts you, but not in anger--there is some sense of evil delight in the discovery. Soon you've withered under her barrage of questions, confessing the truth of your friendship with her husband, and his knowledge of her affair. She begins to cry--perhaps for real, you can't tell--and asks you to leave. You know she's up to something.

The next day she shows up at your place with a creepy lawyer and a private detective. She wants to wire you with a microphone and have you throw yourself at her husband. She believes he'll confess his love back, and with some judicious editing, that will be all she needs to ensure freedom and financial security for her and Ricardo. She promises you a large lump some of money, and hopes that she won't need to use the photos she has. She shoves some still shots from your favorite coffee shop's security video--seems they keep the tapes for a month, after some problems with employee theft, and on a couple of very heartbreaking occasions you had held her husband's hand across the table of the coffee shop as he shared his pain with you.

You agree to go along, but then in the washroom use your blackberry to message the husband about the scheme. When you arrive at their home and go into his office, he asks you to sit down. You both know that Julie is listening to everything, so you have the surreal feeling that you are in some sort of a movie. You listen to Julie's husband explain how much he loved his wife and how sad he is that their marriage is a failure, but that he won't hold her back, and she can have anything she wants.

Then, without warning, he pulls a gun from his desk and puts a bullet into his temple. As you scream, covered in blood, Julie and the detective run in. She runs over to you and hugs you, and the two of you just hold each other for a moment, while the detective checks the husband and informs you of the obvious fact of his death.

When you finally step back, still shaking, from Julie's embrace, you see her staring at her husband's body. She looks over to you, a strange gleam in her eye.

"I thought I could trap him into 40% of the marital assets, tops. This is amazing--Ricardo and I won't even have to move." You gasp at her words. You always knew she was cold-hearted and calculating, but this even boggles your mind. Then she turns to you and tries to reassure:

"Don't worry--you'll always have a job with me." She looks at you blankly as you grab the gun from the desk and point it at her head.

"I quit." The sound of the gun seems even louder this time. Too late the detective turns round, and in an instant his firearm is in his hand and he squeezes the trigger.

The mortician will have a great selection of dresses for your funeral.