In Your Face

There are days when I do get to turn the tables on these guys, and then it’s pay back time!

We were outside the office, grouped in noisy clumps, trying our hand at socializing. One guy keeps interrupting me, teasing and making what he must think to be funny comments. Now, I can take more than my share of ribbing, and I do take a lot of abuse from these guys, but I also like to dish it out. I decide this is just too good an opportunity to pass up.

So I compose my face into a quiet, somewhat pained expression and interrupt him in the middle of a joke.

Using my formal, I-mean-business voice, I say “You know what, you shouldn’t say those things to me. I’m Asian, and you know we take loss of face very seriously.”

He is taken aback, and begins sputtering and stammering out a string of profuse apologies. I let him stew for a while, and then I was laughing so hard, I could hardly say, “I’m just messing with you, big guy.”

The look on his face was priceless–shock, disbelief, a momentary feeling of faintness, I think.

He blurts out,”Oh my god, you’re a mean, mean woman!”

I smile and get the last word in: “You’d do well to remember that.”

Wha-daaah! Day

I almost died today. Almost, but not quite. This job is an all day occupational hazard.

Our No. 2 boss, a stately old gentleman, came into the office at around 1500 hours as was his custom, to sign documents. We discussed the paperwork, he asked a few questions, signed all the papers with a flourish. Done with the day’s approvals, he stood up and walked out the door, to go back to his office, I thought.

Apparently not. What he actually did was walk down the hallway, double back quietly and then come back to stand by my door. He made sure I was busy at my desk. I must have been staring intently at the monitor, because I didn’t see him standing there.

All of a sudden, he dashes into the doorway, eyes wide, arms flailing, shouting what sounded like, “Wha-daaah!

I felt my heart stop for a full three seconds. He was red in the face from laughing so hard.

The blonde IT girl at the scanner table chastised him, “Hey, don’t scare the poor girl to death!”

“Sir, I had three mugs of coffee today, please don’t do that to me!” I manage to say as I will my heartbeat to return to normal.

“Just keeping you on your toes, young lady.” He grins at me and walks back, chuckling, to his office. For real this time, I made sure of that.