“Oh my God,” I cracked up. “Who was it?”
Merrick shrugged. “I’ll let you know when we finally have a winner. Two people still haven’t noticed. It’s been almost seven months.”
“That’s hysterical.”
The waitress stopped by and asked if we were ready to order, but we hadn’t even looked at the menu yet. Merrick told her to come back in a few minutes.
“Do you have a favorite thing here?” I asked, looking down at the menu.
“I usually get the pub burger or the turkey club.”
“Mmm… Both sound good.” I set my menu on the table. “Want to order one of each and share?”
Merrick smiled. “Sure.” He drank some of his water. “So how do you like the job so far?”
“It’s definitely better than I thought it was going to be.”
“You thought it was going to be bad?”
“I thought it might be hell. The guy hiring me told me he was only offering me the job because I was incompetent, some of his staff recently got into a brawl, and they don’t want to see a therapist. Not exactly a rosy picture.”
Merrick tilted his head. “Yet you took the job.”
“I thought I might be able to make a difference.”
“It must be nice to have a job where you get that satisfaction.”
“Are you saying you don’t find your job satisfying?”
“It’s a different kind of satisfaction. I love the adrenaline of my job. I love to discover a needle-in-the-haystack small company that’s going to do big things, get in on the ground floor, and watch them take off. Having financial independence is definitely satisfying, but making more money for a bunch of already rich people doesn’t leave you feeling like you’ve made a difference in someone’s life.”
“What made you go into your line of work?”
“If I’m being honest, I went into it for the money, and I love the rush of the game. What about you? What made you become a therapist?”
“I went to one when I was little, and he helped me a lot. After my mom finally left my dad for good, she put me into therapy.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.”
“It’s okay. I’m not ashamed of it—not anymore anyway. I was when I was little because I thought people only went to doctors when something was wrong with them. But as I got older, I realized getting help doesn’t make you weak, it makes you strong. That’s actually part of the mindset that needs to change about counseling. There’s a stigma about people who need treatment for their mental health, and that stops a lot of people from seeking help. We don’t look at people differently because they go to the dentist or cardiologist, but we do if they see a psychiatrist or therapist—as if only certain parts of the body should be treated.”
“True. But I also wouldn’t have asked you to talk about your cardiologist appointment. I was apologizing for getting too personal, not because you went to a psychiatrist.”
“Oh.” I smiled. “Maybe I jumped up on my soap box unnecessarily there.”
The waitress came back and took our order. When she left, our conversation flowed back to the office, and I had Merrick explain the authority of each of the floor traders and all of the different levels of approval that were in place. I also had him walk me through who had the ability to hire and fire who, and what recent promotions had been made. I was trying to collect all the different stress triggers, so eventually I could help determine how to manage them.
“Anything else you want to know?”