Okay… so I don’t realistically have enough time to write an entry [working late] but this was too good to pass up…
MINI-PREAMBLE
I get along with my manager quite well. We joke back and forth. I completely respect him as a designer and respect his ability to manage our design team. He has a great sense of humour but an even better poker face… this makes it difficult to tell whether he’s joking or not… Either way, I get his humour… well, I’ll leave it at that for now…
On to the story…
So, my manager walked into my office cubicle today, while eating an apple, to ask me a couple of questions about our department’s FTP site. In mid sentence, he noticed my new winter coat [bought it last weekend] hanging by its hood on the entrance way opening to my cubicle. He placed his apple in his mouth and proceed to unzip the hood from the coat [removable], let the coat fall to the floor and said, “Well that’s a drag… the hood. Came off.”
He smiled, then continued to ask me questions about the FTP site… This made me laugh out loud… I couldn’t help it. He laughed too and then picked up my coat and place on the back of a second chair at my desk leaving the hood where it was, “Can you believe that hood?”. I thought this was pretty funny coming from him… but I wasn’t sure if I should just leave it at that or see how far I could take/push his joke. He did, after all, drop my coat on the floor on purpose, essentially making it so I would have to take time to undo his gag.
So as he continued on about FTP access and such, I picked up my coat from the back of the chair and smile at him as I reached past to grab my hood. I sort of cut him off in mid senence by holding out my coat and hood in a way that implied I wanted him to zip them back together. He laughed and said, “Oh, you don’t want me to do that… I’ll get apple stuff all over your nice new coat.” To which I replied, “Actually… I really think I’d like to see you zip it back together.” We both laughed at this… him probably because he thought the whole thing was funny and didn’t think I was serious… me beacuse I thought this whole thing was hilarious, because I was actually serious and because I was kind of nervous about pretty much telling my manager to zip my coat back together.
This banter continued for a bit until he realised that I wasn’t kidding… this made him smile even more. So he took the coat and the hood and tried to manouver them while still holding the apple. I offered to hold it for him. He laughed a sort of, “No, I don’t think so” and stuck it in his mouth. He zipped my hood back onto my coat and placed it back where it was when first came to visit.
“So… you were asking about the FTP site,” I continued. He smiled and the day went on…
A nice break from the norm…
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steelie
Fun story. I can never tell when anyone's kidding, which is kind of ironic, considering *my* sense of humor is so dry…
And now I want a new winter coat. And an apple.
It's fun when a type of authority figure lets loose a little and shows a more human side. It sounds like that's what happened today. Like you said, a break from the norm– it's always nice once in a while. I'm not the type of person who can hold in laughter so I would have been on the floor laughing. *sigh* Fun stuff…
I miss you guys. And I can totally picture the entire thing. G is such a dick sometimes. (in the best possible way) 😀
I would have not known how to react at all! G makes me nervous even when I know he's joking at the best of times. He is funny as hell though but I'm still intimated by his dry sense of humour. I NEVER now how to take that guy. Well done Steelie, I wish I'd been there to see it.
“G” can still throw me off now and again but, on the whole, I’ve got a handle on his sense of humour… or at least I think I do… then he’ll go have a laughing fit at Father Christmas Jr. (long story) and I would never have seen that coming. Crazy “G”…
That was f'ing funny. I'll never forget that moment. I'm laughing just thinking about it. Wish we caught it on tape…
This is stuff I miss out on working for the family business. We don't really joke here, and when we do, someone usually gets offended and we begin screaming. Family is love and love is screaming! hah.