By Emily
Grade C

She’s walking a few feet ahead of you on the street, inexplicably outpacing you even though her four-inch stilettos seem dangerously close to snapping under their voluptuous load. It’s impossible not to notice the way her Seven jeans crease under each glute in time with her clippetty-cloppetty steps. Her hair is straight, shoulder-length, and highlighted so precisely that no two strands are the exact same shade of blonde. Perhaps she’s gabbing animatedly on her cell phone, leaning drunkenly on the shoulder of a near-identical buddy, or taking quick, businesslike puffs on either a Parliament or Marlboro light.

There’s no mistaking it: you’re witnessing a Diet Coke Girl in action.

Diet Coke Girls (see: Tammy Faye Bakker Messner, Jenny Aniston, Communications majors and PR firm ladies) tend to down at least three to six of the silver devils every day in order to maintain their chipper demeanors and their quasi-anorexic eating habits simultaneously. Until recently, I’d never been tempted to join the ranks of the DCGs- in fact, I’d never had more than a sip of the stuff. For one thing, Diet Coke tastes like Windex, and for another thing, everyone knows it’s unhealthy to drink a half-dozen cans of caffeine and caramel coloring, no matter how ‘diet’ it is. But eventually fate intervened, in the form of an ultra-unglamorous temp placement during Fashion Week. While the elite preened in Bryant Park, I sat in a windowless highrise two blocks west, receptionisting at a showroom where a team of aging DCGs sold trampy preteen clothes to Midwestern department store buyers.

This job was heinous for many reasons besides the obvious ones. For starters, it was one of those situations where looooong stretches of boredom are interspersed with moments of frantic busyness. During the busy moments, the DCGs yelled at me for stupid reasons and got my name wrong (‘Melanie’?) so many times that I stopped bothering to correct them. Also I had to show up every morning at 8:30, even though twice I had to sit in the benchless hallway for half an hour until someone arrived to let me in. And although I was working there for the entire week, no one thought it was appropriate for me to know the key-code to unlock the front door, and the bathroom was in the hallway. This meant that every time I got back from peeing, I had to ring the doorbell and wait for someone to let me in- which felt sort of like announcing “I peed!” over an intercom. Actually, that would have been way more fun and less degrading. Also, because it was busy busy Fashion Week, I was not allowed to escape the building for any reason, not even to smoke or eat or get a coffee, and there was no coffee machine in the office.

No coffee machine- but there was a fridge. Three guesses as to what kind of soda the shelves were stocked with.

By about halfway through the second four billion year long workday, I was totally burnt out and ready to snap, in addition to being dangerously close to falling asleep at my desk. The boss, who was super portly and addicted to Weight Watchers Just 2 Points! bars, had just told me to clean up the takeout containers from the nasty cheap Italian lunch she’d ordered. As she walked away, she added, “And you can feel free to take some of the food home with you, if you’d like.” Was she trying to be nice? Who cares! The idea that I would salvage and reheat her soggy half-eaten rigatoni was so incredibly insulting. “I’m not that hard up,” I called after her, in a ‘maybe I’m joking, so you can’t fire me’ tone of voice. She turned and gave me an icy squint. “Everybody does it,” she said. “Not me!” I replied in my brightest, cheeriest customer- service way, and started towards the kitchen.

Obviously, I gave in to the diet siren’s lure. Caffeine is important when you’re dealing with total idiots on a scant ration of sleep. The Diet Coke provided me with enough of a bump to get through the rest of the day, and to treadmill out some of my rage at the gym afterwards in classic yuppie style. The taste, while sickly sweet and cloying, wasn’t as bad as I’d expected- you can even sort of imagine that it’s real Coke if you drink it fast enough. I would advise against letting it get warm, however- warm Diet Coke is a hundred times worse than warm regular Coke, which everyone knows is like drinking your own sweetened carbonated urine. I spent the rest of that week liberally raiding the fridge. I think that maybe seeing the cans on my desk convinced the DCGs in the office that I was doing a more professional job than I really was. A receptionist just isn’t a receptionist without certain accoutrements, I guess. Maybe if I’d worn a nauseatingly strong variety of Victoria’s Secret body spray, they would have given me a raise or something.

Lately I’ve caught myself actually purchasing Diet Coke. It sucks, but I’m starting to be a little bit hooked, although I’m certainly nowhere near sixpack level. Maybe next time I’ll get a Diet Dr. Pepper instead. After all, even if one is forced to live a crap yuppie lifestyle, one can still maintain a shred of individuality. Dr. Pepper is all about that.