Bernie Takes Mushrooms Part 6
The bit where she discovers how AI is going to take over the world
Another extract from my new book. Bernie works in a start up called ‘Fausta’, with a toxic boss called Elizabeth. In this scene she discovers that there is a secret AI tool that’s being used to delve deep into the menopausal female psyche. Ultimately to sell them more stuff. I am pretty sure something like this already exists? I am sharing this to keep me accountable, keep me writing through what is proving to be a pretty challenging time.
Here we go:
Elizabeth didn’t in fact come into the office until lunchtime. When she did she said nothing and opened her laptop and started tapping away. I hadn’t seen Paula in a while and checked on Slack to see if she’d given any thumbs up emojis or similar in the past few hours. She had disappeared. This was the odd thing about working at Fausta. When people didn’t show up to the office you automatically assumed they had been sacked. You didn’t think that perhaps they’d taken a day off for holiday or were sick in bed. You went straight to the worst option and then felt jealous that they’d got the best option and had escaped.
I managed to get a lot done. I found the commissioning editor (or one of them) at Vogue and sent her an email. I said that Fausta were a start up doing amazing work in the menopause space, that Elizabeth was a ‘health and wellness icon’ and despite her young age was passionate about midlife women and empowering them to take ownership of their menopause. I didn’t tell the editor that she also liked to make them feel crap, undermine them at every turn and be nice one minute and cold as ice the next.
‘This sounds like a puff piece,’ came the reply and hour later (for a moment I’d thought that perhaps I’d been successful and we would get a piece in Vogue, ‘If you are interested in paid promotion then I have copied Candice in who can help you with that.’
I was too scared to approach Elizabeth because she’d got bad news from the supplier on the leggings shipment. They were closing down (maybe because of human rights issues?) and so there would be a delay in getting the stock we needed to meet demand. She had copied me on the email which was odd and also anxiety making as I wasn’t clear whether stock control would be another part of my role now as well as getting us into Vogue magazine and everything else. I decided to take a break and then come back in a bit and see if her mood had improved. We had a bit of budget left for PR so maybe we could get a small piece in Vogue and pay for it and she’d be appeased. Nobody looked up when I left the office. I wondered whether everyone else was as miserable as me or whether perhaps this was simply the way with work these days. Post Covid it felt like everyones expectations had got far lower. They were perhaps just happy to not be sick and to be paid. There were no other benefits. No the pay was good. The office was okay (it was completely blank with no personality). The commute was not bad. What else?
There had been a time when I’d been younger, before Tasha had been born when I’d really wanted to find the ideal job. I’d had this idea that there was something out there that would be perfect for me and I’d finally feel fulfilled and like my life had meaning. Then I’d ploughed all my energy into motherhood. Now Tasha was more independent and I was trying to give the same energy to work that I had before but work wasn’t interested.
I got a sandwich (prawn from Pret) and then sat back down at my laptop but this time in one of the small meeting rooms that was as wide as one chair and had a screen door - like an old phone booth really. It was dark in there and I could hear another woman talking - they were supposed to be sound proof but weren’t.
‘She is totally ridiculous. And her hair is so fucking frizzy! I hate her! I want to get out of this shit heap!’
I tried not to listen but I could empathise a lot. She obviously wasn’t talking about Elizabeth as her hair was perfect but it was true that sometimes I’d searched for physical flaws in her appearance to try and cheer myself up a little. It was hard though as her hair was shiny. She wore neutrals in a way that made her look super-wealthy rather than Cilla Black in the 1980s. She also had lovely make up that made her look glowy. I sometimes found that my eye liner had come off because my eyelids were so baggy now that they stuck to head and left a mark. My hair was automatically frizzy. It was possibly hormonal because the life was being sucked out of me. I double clicked on the shared project folder and found one that said ‘Hive mind’. I remembered the abandoned laptop in the room that I’d found weeks ago now. When I clicked on it, my laptop came up with ‘access denied’. I tried the password to the website admin. It didn’t work. I tried the social media password for Fausta and the screen sprang to life.
What do we want to achieve with the Meno-brain? The document had written at the top.
We want to be the number one menopause brand in the world.
How will be achieve this?
We will dominate all competition by tapping into the collective consciousness of thousands of menopausal women.
HOW WILL WE DO THIS?
We will develop our Meno-brain AI concept. Allowing us to have the most powerful marketing tool in the world. We will be able to predict exactly what women in midlife want from brands. We will be able to predict every movement. Every mood. Every tension point. We will sell this tool to other brands. We will dominate all the menopausal market which is worth over 17 billion dollars in the US alone.
I read these words aloud. I felt a slight dip in my tummy, like a bit of butterflies when I read the bit about hiring a menopausal woman. But what was this HIVE MIND? And why hadn’t Elizabeth told me about it? My phone rang and it was Tasha so I picked up.
‘Mum can you put some money in my account because I really need to get a new foundation. I have run out this morning and my skin looks awful!’
‘You don’t need foundation,’ I said because we were always having the same conversation. Tasha was 13 and didn’t need any make up, ‘But yes you can have some pocket money because I think Dad forgot to give you something last weekend. I’ll get some cash out on my way home. I won’t be late tonight- well hopefully not. You’ve got football and think Tilly’s mum is taking you. There’s some crumpets in the bread bin if you fancy one. Or those breakfast biscuits that you like.’
We hung up. I tried not to think about the foundation thing and how I was failing my daughter because I wasn’t putting my foot down on the make up thing. The truth was that kids wore make up when they were much younger now. Tasha had started at age 11 and it wasn’t right but you had to choose your battles. I hit the link that was embedded at the bottom of the document and suddenly my screen went dark and multiple messages popped up one after another.
I am lonely
I no longer fancy him
Is this all?
Why is my life over already?
I’m invisible.
Only old men look at me.
I am tired. Always tired.
I miss my parents.
I feel like nobody takes me seriously anymore.
Statements were appearing one at a time and I realised they were being typed into the portal live. These were comments being fed into the AI machine. Where were they coming from? I suddenly felt a presence behind me and turned around. Elizabeth was standing looking over my shoulder. I couldn’t figure out how she’d come into the room without making a sound.
‘So you have finally discovered our platform,’ she said smiling, ‘Soon we will have everything we need to launch any product or brand we want. We have 5000 menopausal women feeding into this.’
‘Do they know that you’re using their data to sell to people?’ I said.
‘Of course. They get sent a monthly incentive. We ask them to spend a few minutes each day just tying in what they’re feeling. Whether they’re feeling happy. Sad. Conflicted. Then we sometimes follow up with questions on what would solve the challenges they’re navigating. It’s genius. It means no more focus groups.’
‘I guess it also means you won’t need me as an employee,’ I said bluntly.
Elizabeth laughed lightly, ‘Not yet. I mean it isn’t 100% watertight. We still need someone to read through the data and then maybe in a couple of years we will be able to just ask it questions because the AI will predict what these women need. Here try it,’ she said leaning over my laptop, ‘Type in a question and see what comes up.’
I typed - ‘What are the biggest challenges of women in midlife?’
‘Now wait a moment. It’s super quick but still takes a few seconds,’ Elizabeth said proudly, ‘My plan is that you operate it to begin with- and then ultimately well…’ she trailed off but it was clear that she hadn’t thought beyond the immediate future in terms of my employment.
The biggest challenges facing midlife women is the fact that they feel invisible to society. That they feel like nobody values them. That they are ignored by their partners. That their children take everything and give nothing back. That they are always cleaning and tidying after others. That their needs are never met. That they don’t expect to have orgasms in a sexual relationship or if they do, are too tired to bother. They are sad. They are also tired. The majority feel tired every day. Some feel undervalued at work. Others by their family. They have to use the big font on their smartphone and this makes them feel silly. They cry when they hear music from the 80s. They are nostalgic for the past. They think maybe they have made mistakes in their lives and that is why they feel lonely. They value friendship but also find friendships painful if their friends are more successful or have better personal relationships. They like to escape by watching reality TV. They watch it so they can switch off and not think about their lives. They run. Or they like to talk about running and not actually do it. They buy a lot of clothes online but only wear a small percentage of them…
‘What do you think?’ Elizabeth said, ‘Sounds kind of accurate?’
I felt a bit sick because it felt entirely accurate. Sure there were small things that weren’t relevant to me. Like I didn’t feel silly about having the big font on my phone (I hadn’t changed it because I could still see- with my glasses on anyway). The other bits- the crying when music from the 80s came on! How had it managed to get that right? I imagined all the women typing in their feelings and how these feelings were going to ultimately be used to design products that would be sold to them but wouldn’t, could never actually address the source of their feelings. A balm. A cream. A shirt. A supplement.
None of these would solve the fact that getting older, being female was overwhelmingly bad.