Cool.
I offered to pay because I knew Mel was battling with her finances. She had a job at an advertising agency, but the position was very junior, and the money was terrible. She’d been looking for something else for some time, but nothing had come up yet. Mel was one of my more recent friends and she knew several of Dax’s friends as well. I wanted to ask her what was going on and fortunately, I didn’t have to wait too long for her to talk about it. Halfway through her first beer, she said, “I heard about you and Dax.”
“Who told you?”
She seemed to think. “Nolan maybe?” The band’s manager. “I was really shocked, you guys seemed so solid.”
I would not have used that word to describe us, I thought.
“Did you know about him and that girl?”
“Mandy?” Mel seemed to shift in her seat. “I think she’s one of the girls who’s always around, you know, a groupie.”
“But her and Dax?
“I don’t know,” she said.
“Dax told Nolan that he’d made a mistake breaking up with you.” She looked at me meaningfully. “So, he obviously still cares.”
I thought about that. While it was nice to hear that, I wasn’t sure how I really felt about that. Did I want Dax back? After everything that had happened? I was also upset that he was so uninterested in my job and what it was about. It had felt good when Matthew had said that I had done well with the social media, that my campaigns had driven up profits. I wanted my job to mean something, to spend my time making a difference. I knew this was something Mel would understand. She also wanted a job that she loved, cared about.
“Have I ever told you how I got so into social media?” I asked her.
She shook her head.
“It was in college. There was this girl who lived on campus. I didn’t know her but one day, she posted in an online forum about how this guy was stalking her. She said she’d gone to the police, and they said there was nothing they could do, and she was really scared.”
“That’s terrible!”
“Yeah. Anyway, she managed to find a picture of him and posted it online. Then someone else recognized the picture as belonging to a guy who had stolen his backpack with his laptop from campus. He went to the police, and they opened a case. They went looking for this stalker guy, and when they searched his apartment, they found loads of stolen stuff. Turned out he was this serial burglar, and he was charged and brought to trial.”
“Wow, that’s amazing.”
“He had some priors, so he got jail time. Even though he wasn’t prosecuted for the stalking, at least he was taken off the street and the girl could finish her studies without him bothering her. That case really got me thinking, you know, how nobody was able to help this girl but through social media, a way was found to get this guy out of her life.”
“Not to mention, stop him from stealing from all those people!”
“Exactly!”
I got us another round of drinks. “I saw how powerful the medium is. People think we escape through social media, but really it is connection and often, a very judgement-free way to connect with people. “
“And you are using social media now to promote this company you’re working for?”
I was glad she asked. I wanted to talk about Egal.
“This is what Dax never understood. It’s not about the company or making money for the guys in suits. It’s about spreading awareness about cool vegan products. There is so much stuff on the market now and the company hasn’t done specific advertising for their vegan range.”
“What is their flagship product?”
I rolled my eyes. “Cookies, like oatmeal and stuff. Crackers too. They have some other products like breakfast cereal. But I’m excited about the vegan stuff because it tastes good. For real!”
“You’ve tasted it?” Mel looked dubious.
“I have! I would never push something I hadn’t tried myself!”
Mel laughed. “That is cool. I wouldn’t mind trying it, so much of that health food is just so expensive.”
“This brand is priced very competitively on the market,” I said. “Anyway, I don’t want to sell you on it, I just wanted to say, I really believe in it.”