to eat dinner with Ian? I think I’d barf if I had to look at all that white hairy skin while I ate.”
“I never realized how much I should have appreciated my high school’s dress code.”
“Someone’s got to get that guy to put some clothes on.”
“Do you think men look at, or care about, what some other dude is wearing?”
We both roll our eyes.
Hita follows up with, “Yeah, unfortunately those creepy guys from school all got jobs and some of them are now working here.”
By now we’ve reached the cafeteria. Hita spots Caroline, who works on the client side of engineering using PHP to develop our dashboard—what our customers see when they access the solutions departments like mine create.
After standing in the sushi line to get lunch I head into the company dining room to find my friends. It reminds me of my high school cafeteria; everyone is there. You have your bro-grammers, those ex-jock and fraternity guy code-monkeys who are known for their cocky attitude, being bad at math, and sleeping around a lot, a feat made possible by their six figure salaries. Then you have the artist and psychology majors turned programmer types. They work on people's cognitive interaction with technology, write code, smoke a TON of weed, and make art on weekends. They tend to live in social collectives, and are a big reason communal living is making a resurgence in San Francisco. Both of those archetypes are the ones who go to hackathons, and play video games for hours on end. Probably most annoying is that they get to take advantage of that unfair and dumb double standard that allows them to be both nerdy and cool at the same time, while women are not.
Harder to pick out from just looking at them are the engineers and the physicists. The engineers are simple guys who like to solve problems and excel in higher math. My mom always jokes that they make terrible boyfriends since they’re devoid of comprehending romance, but make fantastic husbands since they’re practical, handy and helpful. The physicists, on the other hand, usually can’t do anything around the house and also seem to be arrogant pricks. At companies like mine, we also have mathematicians. They tend to be weirdos; think: UniBomber, Hairy Ian, or Creepy Tom. We also have a gaggle of the H-1B visa carrying guys, mostly from India and China. They tend to hang out together, wear ugly polyester shirts and slacks, and have a habit of giggling and nervously ogling when a woman is near. This list doesn’t even include any of the marketing, sales, customer support, or finance people that work here.
As I look over at the table, I see that Hita is already sitting down with Caroline and Kami. Besides their boss, we are the only women in engineering at this company. As I join them, Caroline looks at me appraisingly.
Shaking my head at Hita, I ask, “What did you tell her?”
Caroline laughs, “Nothing. We’re on our favorite topic: hot guys.”
“I thought our favorite topic was sex,” I respond.
“And the difference is...?” Hita says with a smirk.
“Oh, Abs Guy is definitely hot.” I respond.
Hita starts laughing. “Abs Guy, you’ve already named him.”
“What, it’s not like he had his name written across the back of his speedo.”
“Who cares about a name, what did he look like? Besides the six pack,” Caroline pushes.
“He got out of the pool with one big push up, every muscle in his body flexed.” I swoon as I replay the scene in my mind.
“And?” Caroline says.
“And, his body’s so buff. When he reached into the bin to get out a pull buoy the muscles of his stomach rippled.”
Caroline says, “You have no idea what his face looks like, do you?”
“Um…” I say, as I start cracking up, “he has dark hair and a nice dimple.”
Caroline chuckles and shakes her head. “You sound like you need some, bad.”
Rolling my eyes and groaning, I respond, “You have no idea.”
Hita gives me another long questioning look before asking, “Juliette, last I knew you were taking off for London to be with Stephan.” She bobs her eyebrows up and down when she says Stephan. “The next thing I know you’re asking around about jobs here…without Stephan. “
“How do we move from spotting hot guys to my experience in London? What about your love life? I haven’t heard anything from you since I’ve been back.” I too can give the power look.
Hita sighs. “My love life consists of dodging my