It didn’t take long to realize that corporate culture was a phrase that companies use to describe, or more often than not, cover up their weirdness. One company where Max interviewed described themselves as “fast, fun, and friendly” but that was their way of putting lipstick on a pig, kind of like a blind date that was described as having a “great personality.” This wasn’t a bad company or a bad job, it was just weird to Max, like that one uncle – who wasn’t actually his uncle – who worked for his family on the farm, lived alone, and called him skipper. Max hadn’t been in many elevators but soon learned that they were a good way to judge corporate culture, and at this job, when you were in the elevator, it wasn’t fast, fun and friendly, it was slow and you stood quietly with a bunch of people you don’t know and stared nervously at your feet or straight ahead. It wasn’t like there was a sign in the elevator or an elevator policy in the 90-page employee handbook. He knew because one of the requirements of his job was to study the employee handbook, which was presented to him like a gift but was actually just the most boring 3-ring binder in the history of the world. It was apparently just a cultural norm that there would be no talking and no looking at other people so that’s how it happened pretty much every day. But this Monday morning was different. Max followed the herd into the elevator and settled in by the buttons but then his boss, who was one of the few people that he knew and liked – stuck one of her many bags in the way of the closing doors and begged rather urgently “hold the door!” He’d never seen anyone do that before and was sure it broke a policy somewhere but the door wasn’t going anywhere with that big bag in the way, so Max stepped forward – the only person who did – to help her organize her other eleven bags and get into the elevator. Her name was Barbara but most people called her Babs. Everyone but Max that is. She said that she had that nickname since she was a child and that it was totally fine to call her that but she was his boss and he didn’t know her very well so he stuck with Barbara. She thanked him for helping her and they started chatting about the weekend, shattering the rules of elevator decorum, and even though it was Monday morning, it brightened both of their days. Just when the elevator was finally closing again, someone else managed to weasel his way in. The SVP of Human Resources was the definition of a suit, he had that “smart useless look” like how Julia Roberts described Richard Gere in Pretty Woman. It wasn’t enough that he was lacking human personality, he also had to be the leader of human resources – he was a living oxymoron – he didn’t seem human at all. Of course he knew Babs and she may have been the only person he knew that had a nickname so he proudly said “good morning Babs.” Then he made a big mistake. He took a look at all her bags and started with seemingly endless probing clueless questions. “What on earth do you have in all those bags?” was his opener. Babs just smiled and reluctantly started rattling off work stuff, a laptop, her lunch, etc. Being the nosy goofball that he was, he kept going. “Well that accounts for about half of the bags, I can’t imagine why anyone would need all of those bags.” Babs kept looking at the buttons and praying for an end to the elevator ride but it stopped on every floor so other white guys in suits could get out – and they were going to 21. “What’s that big one right there with the hoses sticking out of it?” There weren’t many other poor souls left on the elevator with the three of us and Babs was in the mood to teach our HR friend a lesson so she let him have the truth. “Oh that one is my breast pump. You see, I’m breastfeeding my baby still and every day, I sit in the ladies room down on six in the training department because no one ever uses that bathroom and I hook these suction cups (she took one of them out – the suction cup, not her boob) up to my breasts and this machine extracts milk and puts it into bottles. Two guys reached around me and hit the next button and got off – I recognized them, it wasn’t their floor but they looked even whiter than usual and just wanted to leave. Babs went on, “If I don’t pump during the day, my breasts get engorged and are quite painful and could even dry up. And this works well because after I pump, I store the bottles of milk in this little cooler, bag number six, and then I can feed my baby right after I pick her up at daycare. Time stopped in that elevator – the SVP of Human Resources was visibly sweating and turned from white to green and pushed a button, faced the doors and when they opened on 18, also not his floor, he ran through them. Max had been holding in a laugh and thought he was going to burst but he’d never seen anyone laugh on the corporate elevator before and didn’t know if it was appropriate but then Babs glanced over at him, winked and smiled. When they finally got to 21, Max laughed as he carried several of the bags for his boss – who he liked before and really respected now – and made a point to meet her at the elevators most days from then on. Not only was he part of the best elevator ride in the history of corporate America, he also learned a really valuable lesson about how hard it was to be a working mom in a man’s world.  And from that day forward, he laughed every time he saw the SVP of HR, and he called his boss Babs, they both earned it.