One of my bosses went to Bangkok for the weekend. He packed up his belongings quietly and slipped off on Friday afternoon.
My fellow group member, I'll call her Naomi, ran to our corner of the office and announced that the boss was leaving in a KLIA Limo. We watched him wave the guard away as they try to scan his name tag with a portable scanner on his way out and get on the car from the glass windows behind my cubicle.
"He didn't even let any of us know he was leaving," Naomi observed. We all knew why. He was doing exactly what he always accused others of doing - leaving the office during office hours without prior notification.
We also knew why he was going to Bangkok for the weekend. Alone.
"But what he's gonna do in Bangkok all alone..." Penny wondered aloud. I guess not everyone knew.
"All I'm saying," Naomi started as she put away her cell phone, "is that he'd better not come back with any weird diseases. And I'm staying clear of him next week."
I burst out laughing. Couldn't have said it better myself.
___________________________________
He was back at work on Monday, all boisterous and overwhelming as usual. With a packet of tissue paper in his hands and sneezing constantly. Not so usual.
"Got you guys chocolate. Get it from Naomi." He came to our cubicles waay too early in the morning smelling like cheap perfume. I visibly shrank away as he leaned over to read the assembly speech I was drafting out for him.
"I'm juz looking! What was the reaction for." He blew his nose into a crumpled tissue paper. I stared at the used tissue, resisting the urge to wipe my entire desk with anti-bacterial gel right there and then. He noticed my uncomfortable stare.
"Boo!" He waved the blasted germ-infested thing in front of me. Involuntarily, I let out a yelp and shot out of my seat. "You're a dirty old man!" It came out of my mouth before I could control myself.
The silence that followed was deafening. For a split second, the boss looked as if he was going to say something, then stopped. My leader, who sat next to me, looked
around uneasily.
"Just pass me the speech when you're done." And he left, contaminated tissue still in hand.
Naomi and I have been feeling like crap (physically) for the past two days. I just hope it's nothing more than a normal flu.
Ugh. He disgusts me, seriously.
