Now she knows how to live life…drinking
My industrial engineer co-worker Annie is about to embark on a fantastical adventure: a year and a half working in New Mexico! I have fond memories of New Mexico, particularly at Roswell when Wil and I were filling up on gas when the attendant came out and gave a sermon on the virtues of domestic abuse amongst immigrants. I hope she’s not planning on going to Roswell anytime soon.
So in the spirit of things, I helped to organize her farewell party last week, which consisted of dinner and then drinks. The “drinks” portion of this was a vital component of our agenda, as a few weeks ago when she was biz traveling in Malaysia, I saw her on messenger and started chatting with her about various data that I needed to complete an analysis. After much serious back and forth, she suddenly cyber-blurted: “Eric, I’m drunk!”
Since 99% of the people who work in this office consider a sip of beer to be excessive drinking, this was quite a pleasant surprise coming from this diminuitive, doe-eyed human being who ostensibly did nothing but cook dinner for her husband and industrial engineer things like crazy. “I never knew what it was to live life until tonight,” she wrote.
Charles, I’ll miss your big mouth
Thus, the drinking. Marching with her department mates up the stairs at JZ Club felt like accompanying lambs to the slaughter; I always get tense and nervous when I am asked to drink with serial non-drinkers. I did my best to refrain from tearing off my clothes and jumping up and down the table once the bottle of vodka arrived, while the others refrained from drinking the strange conction of alcohol and orange juice in their glasses. The only person who was game was Annie, who engaged in a toast with straight vodka. The other highlight was seeing the other engineers pour a double shot into their manager Charles’ glass when he went to the bathroom. Those mischievous pranksters! I’ll never underestimate the potential for chicanery from industrial engineers ever again.
Well, I’ll miss both Annie and Charles as they head off to New Mexico to enjoy the beautiful sky and the chilly xenophobia. In the meantime, I’ve made it my goal to seduce every remaning industrial engineer in the office to the dark side, which is why I’m bringing Carlsberg mini-keg to their weekly game of cards from now on. It begins.
