I love Seattle when the sun comes out and the water out of the office windows sparkles, even though it's still freezing - there is actual
visibility, and you can see the snow-covered mountains past the bright blue water, and it actually starts to make sense why people live there. That and the phenomenal coffee and amazing fish that I ate at all but one of my meals.
Now that I
love my job, even when it's dysfunctional or ridiculous, going up to the Seattle office is so great! I ran from meeting to meeting to random meeting I booked to talk about things only vaguely implied indirectly in my job description, and loved every geeky minute. Last time I came up the New York girls were there, but this time I was solo, and the only female in the group besides the very quiet, married Chinese lady in QA and a new girl who had just started that day.
Two of the three single men in the group (both of whom have in the past made awkward advances towards me still short of needing to involve HR) continued their usual awkward but harmless overtures, which further lead me to believe that they must have a hard time meeting women outside of work.
The one who told me back at the Holiday party that he had been attracted to me since he took part in interviewing me for my position sent me the 6 pm non sequitur one-line e-mail asking me out that night:
Want to go for some wine and tapas in Capitol Hill?
Followed by a pasted excerpt from a CitySearch review for the place he proposed. I declined, saying that I already had plans with my SF coworker who was also in Seattle for the week (yay, thanks A!). It's a delicate balance, keeping things friendly enough so that working together is efficient, but not being too friendly because I wouldn't want to give him the impression that it would be anything but blatantly inappropriate for anything to happen between me and an almost-40 , divorced coworker and father of a 3-year-old, who I work with closely.
The other one, a never-married 35-year-old who constantly takes friendly touching to a barely-appropriate-for-the-workplace extreme, constantly came by my desk, poking my arm with his finger, poking his head over my shoulder, patting me on the shoulder barely in context. Since he does this with all of the girls in the group in their early-20s, I don't take this as seriously, but it is still constantly skirting the line where I think I should say something - but in that event, there goes the effective/efficient working relationship.
Today as I was leaving he insisted that I come say goodbye - so I go to his row and say goodbye from 10 feet away, with a bag on each arm as shields from his attempts to hug me.
"Oh, I see how it is," he said.
"What?" I say, with body language turning to walk away.
"Come on, give me a hug," he says, while walking towards me with his arms outstretched - made less awkward only by the fact that the others in his row had thankfully left.
"But we're at work - I don't hug anyone
else at work."
He already has his arms around my shoulders, hugging me over my useless shields of laptop bag and handbag. I leave my arms at my sides. In the 9 modules of HR-mandated sexual harassment training, there was no module that would have helped with this scenario.
Other than avoiding incidents of borderline sexual harassment and not-yet-necessary confrontation thereof, I went to a Marines game with a few guys from work. And on the way I completely randomly ran into Cameron, who I knew back in San Jose! Wow - Seattle is so small. He briefly joined me and my coworkers, who included the inappropriate-touching guy, a newer developer who is super cool (recruited by his girlfriend at our company), my manager (who has deadpan humor down better than anyone I've ever met), and the new guy on the team who moved out from London, who is so fabulously charming, cute, impeccably dressed, witty and sweet that I had to make great efforts not to flirt with him excessively, because my manager was right there and that is just awkward (luckily Facebook tells me he is in a relationship. You Facebook naysayers clearly don't recognize the value of this).
After the game I went with the new developer to meet up with his friends at Linda's in Capitol Hill, and he and his friends were so much fun! We stayed out way too late and I barely squeezed in 5 hours of sleep, so I was miserable, tore-up-looking and overcaffeinated-bug-eyed all day. As I'm refilling my cup of coffee in the kitchen, the British guy comes over to the coffee machine.
"I got half-decaf this morning - what a mistake!" I said.
He starts to tell me something about how coffee is good for you, and I say, "Antioxidants!" because I totally read that article.
"But it's also good for your brain," he said.
"Oh, really?"
And he starts to launch into some unintelligible explanation of some scientific study about the brain and caffeine that I can't follow because I'm too busy being tired and trying not to flirt with him in the kitchen, until he can tell I look skeptical (confused) and am not following him.
"I'll send you the article," he says.
Five minutes later I get an e-mail from him, with a
link to a BBC article in the subject line, and in the body:
"Just to show I wasn’t just making it up ;)."
The greatest part of the article is where it says
"Other studies have shown that high levels of cholesterol in the blood can make this barrier "leaky"."
I respond,
"I’m fairly certain my fatigue is due to staying up late and drinking, rather than a leaky protein layer."
He replies,
"Sounds like you need to hang out with the British at the summit in San Francisco and build up your tolerance levels.. We’ll be sure to cure any future onset of fatigue."
Sounds like I'm in for a world of trouble.
