Don’t worry, JP, I’m not angry with you, it’s just that, for the past two years, I’ve recorded on my iPhone all the charming little utterances that you and your fellow managers have made about me and other women. I wasn’t born yesterday.

JP and I took the lift up to the eighth floor. Everyone we passed gratified us with a perfunctory ‘Good luck’. Mr Head Honcho was feared by everyone within the company and was a legend outside it. ‘An iron fist in an iron glove,’ said his fellow C.E.O.s of blue-chip companies. ‘A stupid arsehole,’ said Hégémonie’s Polish workers, whose factories had been shut down recently. A big boss, completely unknown to the general public, but a demigod in the financial world, who must be venerated and, most importantly, never contradicted, at the risk of incurring the wrath of this modern-day dictator.

I have never been afraid of him, doubtless thanks to my upbringing. My mother always used to tell me that, if someone intimidated me, I should imagine them with their trousers down, to humanize them. Whoever they are, however arrogant or powerful, imagining them on the toilet should reduce them to their rightful place in your mind, my girl: he’s a man like any other, who has the same vital needs, but also the same rights and the same obligations as everyone else. Don’t ever forget that.

Ten minutes later, we walked into the meeting room. Thirty or so people were sitting around the table, looking earnest. We’re talking cosmetics, after all, which is a very serious subject. In this sort of meeting, there’s a bunch of dummies who pretend to be listening, but sit there checking their emails on their laptops, or shopping online. They never say a word, but always agree with the big boss, nodding every time he opens his mouth. When a woman is doing the presentation, she’s expected to wear a short skirt and high heels, to be made up with all the company’s products: Billion Lashes mascara, Ultra-red lipstick, Vintage Chic eye shadow, New York Fun limited-edition fuchsia nail varnish. At the very least.

Mr Head Honcho likes ridiculing the consumers, whom he condescendingly refers to as the ‘little wifeys’; the models in the Hégémonie ads, whom he compares to poultry, demanding we fire them at the first sign of ageing; the factory workers who don’t give a fuck, those on the minimum wage, who ought to think themselves lucky to have a job and who could easily be replaced by migrant workers who are happy to live on one euro a day; and the female marketing directors, whose language is peppered with English to disguise the hollowness of their recommendations. Mr Head Honcho’s a hoot. And the room’s in stitches, of course.