Monday, November 23, 2009

What are you lookin' at?


So... this is an ongoing problem I'm having at work. Let me start off by saying 95 % of the time I have a quite pleasant work environment. The hours are great, my students are eager to learn and well beahved, the food is pretty decent and my co-workers are quite friendly.  Here in ladies and gentlemen lies the problem. Oh yes, they are friendly but sometimes too friendly. Now I dont mean too friendly in the "touch my ass when no one's looking, by the coffee machine " sense. I mean the "Oh can you please step away from my desk, you're hovering and I can feel your hot breath on the back of my neck or feel your gaze burning a hole in the side of my face" friendly. Now the hover seems to have been adopted by two of my male co-workers. So what started off as a seemeingly friendly" what are you doing ?"has snowballed into let me sit in your lap and play the 20 questions game.When I put on my head phones and say " let me get back to what I was doing"...guess what? thats your cue to get up and leave, not scoot your desk chair closer so you can eyeball me and my laptop." Go somewhere!" I want to shout in my almost silent co-office. But I smile and position my body as a barrier between the two of us and put my palm to my head. Thus without words expressing through my body langauge I want to be left alone. Yet in still he is peristant in asking questions about my favorite celebrity and songs I like. " For the love of God man... piss off " I say in my head.So after some time of him staring at me with his strange Korean gaze... Smiling and in the most polite Korean etiquette I tell him to "go waste time" as the cleark once told me at E-Mart. Not sure what this translation means, but whatevr it was, he got the picture... and swiftly departed. My Korean male co-workers are swift and quiet like samaurai... hold on let me check to make sure they're not reading this over my shoulder... Okay, the coast is clear! I thought about not wearing deoderant for a few days and trying the B.O.strategy but one of them smelled of fermented oyster sauce that had been sitting in the sun for about a week. So that approach is out.
Now I'm clearly going to have to explain to them in the nicest way possible about "personal space" and how much I enjoy it.So with my swivel chair ready to move and a desk partition in the works, I diligently work on red sequined shoulder pads and a hair clips that read " Do Not Disturb".


Confucius say:  beware of the" friendly" co-workers that nuisence in your ear, nip it in the butt soon or you'll be pestered for a year.

1 comment:

  1. AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAA! Hot Breath! I say just go to sleep....That'll do it!

    Kia

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