Insights into a Bimbo's Mind

Me and My Big Boss

Sunday, October 02, 2005

As I was having dinner tonight in front of the TV all by myself, I was thinking about my weird encounters with my big boss recently. My big boss is my manager’s boss and i think, for most people's cases, we are sheltered from the big boss by our own managers. I mean, if you think of it, how often do you talk to your manager’s boss? Though the case for me might be slightly different because my manager sits all the way in Houston, and his manager, the one I call the big boss an Englishman, travels to Malaysia more often to oversee the business over here. And everytime he comes to Malaysia, he resumes the seat reserved for him, where else but the seat right next to me. Let’s call him :P.

I’ve joined this job for close to 1.5 months now and :P’s been in and out of Malaysia several times. Each time he’s here for a couple of days and was always busy so we’ve hardly exchanged anything more than a few polite words of “Good morning” and “Good bye”.

Then came his recent trip here, mainly to launch my new department, followed by a department lunch where we all went for a hearty meal of dim sum at an expensive Chinese restaurant near our office. Now comes a part which I’m sure you’ve experienced yourself before. When I got to the Chinese restaurant, I noticed that one of the first thing everyone tried to do was run for a seat on other tables where :P was not on it. When other tables were filled, the aim then was NOT having to sit next to him. I saw with my own eyes, my colleagues scrambling for seats as far away from him as possible. Best if right opposite where it’s too inconvenient to talk because noise from the restaurant would then drown your voice anyway. Sometimes I think, poor bosses. Nobody ever wants to sit with them, but yet at the end of the meal, they always have to foot the bill for the food eaten by people who didn’t want to sit with them in the first place. Actually, I was walking towards the table with a more senior guy and I expected him to resume the spot next to :P so they can have more of their kind of man to man talk. Very sad to say that this time my judgement totally failed me and even Mr. Senior Colleague decided to choose the seat away from him. Sigh.. so the last seat left for me was the one next to :P.

That I must say was the very first time I started having little conversations with :P. Just as his reputation promised to be, he’s a very gentle, nice, soft-spoken and intelligent old man. Since I wasn’t very good at talking about topics like long term technical changes vs short term organizational changes and it’s financial implications towards the bear market..bla..bla..bla, I asked him about how Hurricane Rita has affected the Houston office, whether he liked Malaysian food as compared to food in London, and all the time, I was making a very conscious effort avoiding topics of makeup, hair, shoes and bags, a.k.a topics close to home. Overall, I must say it wasn’t a super intelligent conversation we had but it was pleasant enough and I hid well under the camouflage of the fact that it’s a social event outside the office so we shouldn’t talk about work. There was a part where he asked me what kind of book I was reading. My big mouth nearly blurted, “Diary of a Manhattan Call Girl” by Tracy Quan. Luckily I managed to stop myself and instead, just gave a general answer about Horror and Mystery books.

Then after lunch, he asked to have a chat with me. Ofcourse, when he approached my table, I was virtually chatting with a fellow colleague in the next building. Damn! It always happens to me. I work hard the whole day and the moment I choose to relax for 5 minutes, the big boss comes by and sees me slacking off. Immediately, I shut all my windows and walked off with him to the pantry for a small chat. He just wanted to have a little chat with me, making sure that everything was ok since I’ve just joined for a month plus and I’m sitting here all alone with my manager so far away. I’m sure you’ve been through this as well. Honestly, I didn’t have any concerns. But to keep some conversation going, I just thought up something there and then, and said, “Oh, why are these jobs being moved from Netherlands to KL? Is this a cost cutting exercise?".. bla..bla..bla.. just to create some topics to talk about so that it just doesn’t end with him asking me a question and me saying, “NOPE. No concern.” So the poor guy had to explain to me organizational changes happening in the company and why it is happening, assuring me that it won’t affect me negatively though I should expect to see this and that coming my way in the future. Honestly, there wasn’t a thing he said to me that I didn’t know already. Then he asked me if I had any other concerns.. Uggh.. looks like I had to be more creative.. Then I voiced out about my views of how my handover is going and how I think it can be improved..bla..bla..bla.. Another effort to keep the conversation going because whatever I wanted to improve with my pre-decessor, I could handle it myself without needing to tell him, isn’t it? So we went on like this for a while, he did a lot of explanations along the way. Poor guy but at least at the end of the conversation, he would have felt that he did his part, helping this new girl Miki-C fit into the team. Miki-C on the other hand, just didn’t want to make things awkward by saying, “No concern. Thanks. Let’s get back to work.”..

After the conversation, I went back to my place and very vainly, wanted to see how I looked like, trying to imagine how he saw me during the conversation. EEEeekk! Of all days, TODAY I had a piece of humongous green vegetable stuck to my front teeth!!! All my hopes of creating even a normal impression to :P is dashed. How do you keep a straight face talking to a staff about organizational changes when she has a gigantic piece of bright green vegetable stuck to her front teeth?

Then came the final showdown. On the last moments before :P left the office to fly back to the Netherlands, I was also packing up to catch the company bus home. The bus was leaving in 1 minute and my stupid stupid laptop was taking ages to shut down. :P was going around saying his goodbyes, see you in November and I too, bid him goodbye and take care, while secretly glaring at my laptop, cursing it to hurry up. When my laptop was finally shut down completely, I stuffed it into my bag and ran out. When I reached the elevator area, :P was there waiting for an elevator.

I saw that the elevator was still many floors beneath and there wasn’t time for me to wait so I decided to take the staircase. As :P saw me, he smiled and started to say something. Since I REALLY didn’t have the time to spare, I just mumbled to him, “I’m trying to catch a bus! I’ll take the staircase!” and ran towards the stair exit. I must have mumbled in urgency and :P did not hear me so here comes the embarrassing part. He must have thought it was an emergency and suddenly, he started to run as well! I burst into the stairway running down the staircase and after 2 seconds he burst through the stairway door as well, running down the staircase after me! It was a really difficult decision I had there. At that point, when time was precious, do I stop and explain to him that I was just running after the bus and there’s no emergency? Or do I just run on and let the poor old man run so many flights of stairs for nothing? That was a tough moment. Since he was a reasonably fit old man in his 60s, he caught up with me when I deliberately slowed down a little. Still walking fast, I then explained to him I was catching my bus, to which he answerd, “Ohhh!”… I didn’t have time to blush nor to think of what to make out of that very situation because my mind was focused on that damn bus. And since I had to talk and explain and run at the same time, my bimbo mind must have used up its full capacity and lost count of how many floors I ran down. In a slower trot, he still followed me from behind but he definitely saw it when I burst into the stairway exit of the 1st floor and realized that there is still one more floor down to go. I then burst in through the stairway exit of 1st floor again and continued my run down the stair case… I tell you.. What must he think of me??

When we both reached ground floor, I looked out of the building and saw that the bus was not even there yet. Phew.. I relaxed a bit and slowed down for him.. Still flushed from the run and the encounter, I tried to patch up and make a bit of a conversation, “So your flight is tonight, huh? Are you able to sleep on the bus most of the time?”…My bimbo brains have really used up its full capacity.

He answered, “You mean the plane?”… I put my foot in my mouth so often, it must make his head spin!

Sigh.. here I was dreaming about making the big boss my best friend? Ok even if not best friends, at least a better first impression? Uggh.. This time i failed completely. I'll need to jump through fire hoops and do acrobatic stunts at work in the future to make him forget this incident..Great start to a great career, Miki-C!

posted by Miki-C @ 1:42 PM