Time to take a risk !
Time to step outside my comfort zone !
Eeeek !!!
Stylish Female Colleague's assistant is leaving, having been offered a prestigious development opportunity with another Borough (well, she was hardly likely ever to be offered one by staying put...)
Proposals for her leaving lunch were circulated before I went away on holiday, and having ascertained that Life Coach Colleague and Private Colleague are planning to attend, I email Stylish Female Colleague upon return to say I will join them. I haven't been to an office social event for about 2 years (hell, I wasn't invited to any for 18 months) but SFC's assistant is a perky confident young woman whom I have liked from the first moment I met her, and during her months with the department she has represented a little ray of sunshine in the gloaming.
It's a small group of 8 which gathers in the local Thai restaurant round the corner from the Town Hall, and I am relieved to see that Spiteful Manager has decided not to attend (Line Manager and Remora are both safely out of the country on leave). However, upon arrival I am slightly thrown to see New Boss at the table.
I end up sitting next to him, and from his dour expression glean that I am probably not his dream lunch companion. I am wearing a shortish dress, true; but above it rests my phiz which for one panic-stricken moment forgets how to configure its features into Stepford Employee mode.
For want of an obvious conversational opener, I say "it's so nice of you to come to Assistant's leaving lunch. I'm sure she appreciates it very much". I don't know what I am expecting at this point (that we start swapping recipes for scones, or confiding our earliest childhood memories to each other perhaps?) but am slightly startled when New Boss glares at me, and says aggressively "why wouldn't I come? Assistant is a great person. A great person and she has made a wonderful contribution to the office".
I hastily review what I have just said. I can't identify anything offensive in those two innocuous sentences, but clearly New Boss has Taken Things The Wrong Way. Something he continually accuses me of doing, in fact. Did he perhaps think I was being satirical? Has my Stepford Employee expression faltered at some point? Is he not-so-subtly conveying his belief that I am the opposite ie an evil witch who has made bugger all contribution to the office ??
F*** knows.
I am tempted to say "goodness, we're awfully grumpy wumpy today, aren't we?"
But I just say "yes, she is lovely isn't she?"
Then I take a long calming slurp of my Thai tea.
It's only after the lunch is drawing to a close, and New Boss has departed, that everyone relaxes and starts to talk more freely. And after having regaled us with a description of the fearsome hangover she was nurturing earlier in the week, Assistant suddenly shares an illuminating anecdote,
"I bumped into New Boss that morning" she tells us, "and he said to me 'what's the matter with you? You look like f***ing sh*te'." She laughs enthusiastically, before adding "I love that kind of management style".
Oh. Ah. Hmmmm.
I don't love that management style. I don't love it AT ALL. And from the sharp intakes of breath around the table, it sounds as though Life Coach Colleague and Private Colleague love it as little as I do.
But suddenly I twig why New Boss is grumpy wumpy ! He is having to wave goodbye to a fetching 22 year old who thought he was the bees knees, and to whom he could say exactly what he pleased; and he is now stuck with a bunch of frosty-knickered 40 somethings who all expect him to behave in appropriate public sector fashion...
Oh dear!
That's clearly something New Boss is going to find a wee bit of a challenge...
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