The door to the conference room swings open and in walks my assistant Monica, carrying a comically large diaper cake. It’s trimmed with blue ribbon, and has a blue teddy bear clinging to the side of it. Poor Monica’s arms are trembling with the effort of holding it, and I rush over to grab the other end before she drops the whole thing on the floor.

“A diaper cake from Cuddles,” she says breathlessly as we lower the monstrosity onto the banquet table. “It’s a bit… big.”

I smile to myself, imagining Jed Cofield telling his secretary to send over this giant cake. Is it terrible that I secretly hope the diapers in the diaper cake are any brand other than Cuddles?

I roll my eyes at Monica. “Next time, I’m going to request a diaper cupcake.”

Monica covers her mouth with her hand as she giggles. She’s been my assistant for the last six months, since my old assistant Gertie fell and broke her hip, and was not-so-gently pressured by the powers-that-be into an early retirement. And it’s been amazing having Monica. Not that I didn’t like Gertie, who made really incredible chocolate chip cookies, but she was just so slow at everything. Like, even watching her walk across the room was painful. And she didn’t know how to send documents to the printer from her computer. Even faxes were a little tricky for her—I think the fax machine hadn’t been invented yet when she started at Stewart. I’m not sure if phones had been invented yet. But they probably had fire and the wheel.

So yes, Monica is absolutely a breath of fresh air. She’s in her early twenties, a recent college graduate with a degree in art and math, and sharp as a tack. She soaks in everything like a sponge. Having Monica as an assistant has increased my efficiency by at least… sixty-eight percent.

I knew immediately during our interview that she was going to be my new assistant. The way she looked reminded me so much of myself, from her jet black hair tied awkwardly in a bun behind her head to her ill-fitting suit to her overeager smile. And then instead of praising me for the Cuddles campaign like every other candidate I interviewed, Monica gushed in detail about a campaign I did years ago for a yogurt company—one that was less well-known but one I was particularly proud of. It showed the girl did her research.

And when I asked her what she wanted to get out of the position, she replied, “I want to learn everything you know.”

I hired her on the spot.