“No? I would have thought the tone of the workplace would be different—when none of you are getting paid,” Cartwright said, light teasing undergirding his words.
Why was it that every man over thirty-five thought women thought being undermined was fun?
Hazel felt like she might sprain something rolling her eyes. “There are positions for volunteers, but people in the nonprofit sector do get paid. Job growth for nonprofits was up 57% last year, compared to 36% in for-profit businesses.” She tapped her pencil impatiently. “Anyway, no one’s paying a soccer mom, but you still have to mediate conflict there.”
“Every business has to pay competitively, or lose their talent,” Chris, the male student, said. He sprawled back on his desk, taking up as much room as humanly possible. “You can’t kumbaya your way to having a strong workforce. It doesn’t matter how good your communication skills are.”
“Your goal for a nonprofit is to create a job worth staying for. Job satisfaction is just as important as competitive pay,” Hazel snapped. “There’s a lot of research to prove people don’t only base their job decisions on salary, especially young people entering the workforce right now.”
“I’d be satisfied with a six-figure salary,” Chris said.
Gina, another female student, leaned forward at her desk and gave Dr. Cartwright a saccharine smile. “I’d like to hear about how you retain your… talent.”
Hazel felt her skin burning again and glanced back at Gina, who was grinning completely without shame.
“Maybe another day,” Cartwright replied, to Hazel’s immense relief. “For now, I want us to start talking about how you will each develop rapport with your employees and how you will deploy your communication structure.”
Hazel sighed and pulled up the work she’d prepared for the day. Her mind began to drift back to that daydream and, for a few moments, all thoughts of corporate communication were pushed out of her head by the image of her professor’s bare chest and abs. She had to focus. It was important that she learned as much as she could from every class, no matter how difficult it was to get along with the professor.
***
Ian Cartwright scanned over his classroom with a confident smile. While he’d never doubted his own business prowess—that spoke for itself— the concept of teaching had seemed more daunting at first. Now, a few weeks into the semester, and he looked forward to greeting his students at the beginning of class. They all had such vibrant energy and so many ideas. Granted, plenty of those ideas were complete nonstarters, but the important thing was that every student in this class was highly motivated and highly intelligent. They would be able to feel out the market in time, as they gained experience.
His eyes drifted, as they often did, to Hazel. She didn’t look very impressive at first glance. She had a fair complexion, and almost always wore her ginger hair drawn into pigtails, or one large ponytail nearly on the top of her head. She had a smallish frame and the way she tilted her head back when she was assessing what someone said was almost birdlike. There was something about her, however, that made it hard to keep his eyes off of her.
She leaned over as she spoke, ever the emphatic budding demagogue, and lectured Chris on appropriate team-building activities for employees. The young man was teasing her, of course, amping up his own feelings of superiority. She was right in principle, as usually was the case. It was just difficult to take her seriously at times. She cared too much. And she dressed like she was on her way to a construction site, or she’d rolled out of bed minutes before class and gotten dressed in the dark. Today was another black tank top (with the words I’ll save myself thanks printed over the image of a crown), layered over a white tank top and an electric blue bra. And of course, her jeans, which looked as if they’d survived a hurricane.
It was hard to watch such an articulate young woman holding herself back with her youthful ideals. If she’d clean herself up a bit, put on some makeup and maybe a dress, Hazel would find so many more doors opening to her. But she was so stubborn. Ian wasn’t certain whether that trait attracted or repelled him. Either way, Hazel had managed to catch his interest in a way he couldn’t shake.
“That’s Clarence Thomas levels of wrong, Chris!” Hazel snapped, slamming her palm against the table.
“Clarence Thomas still has a job,” Chris gloated, shooting finger guns at her.
Ian rubbed his fingers over his lips, spotting a few eye rolls from other students, as he walked over to break up their spat.
“If you don’t mind, this is a bit too much drama for the beginning of the week,” he said.