Feral Geral(d)

In the short time I've been at my new job, I seem to have attracted the attention of the office's resident creepy old man.

His name is Gerald, and although the company directory lists his position as a Clerk, his daily activities would lead one to believe that his sole purpose in the firm is to skeeve out the ladies (presumably to keep us from climbing too far up the corporate ladder, or something).

The fun starts when I get to my desk at 8am each morning. Within five minutes of me sitting down, G will approach my cubicle (may I just add that he emerges out of nowhere, he's rather stealthy for an octogenarian), drape an arm oh-so casually over the top my cubicle wall and ask me if I am 'firing on all pistons today'. This is his one and only conversation starter, and I'm pretty sure that he's been using that very line to court the dames since World War II.

While I'm thinking of a response - the default is a fake chuckle followed by "Yes, thanks", but sometimes I like to mix it up - G will take the opportunity to have a nice lingering perv at my boobs, which is where his gaze will remain for the rest of the conversation. He'll ramble on about nothing for a couple more minutes before slinking away to harrass his next victim.

Over the course of the day, Gerald will visit my desk at least three more times, always for superfluous reasons (to tell me the names of everyone who is absent from work, to check that I am still firing on all pistons, etc). This always gets me annoyed, because he'll interrupt whatever I'm doing so that I can be an audience for his rambling monologues. Take today, for instance. He was prattling on about something or other, and all I could think about was how much I wanted to get back to the document I was in the middle of typing (said document was a graphically detailed account concerning some unfortunate woman's vaginal tearing, ENOUGH SAID).

You might be thinking that I am being unfairly impatient with an old man, right? Allow me to help you defect to Team Lola: I work for a group of self-important, ridiculously demanding sharks lawyers who like to drown me in work while telling me that they want it on their desks an hour ago. "Sorry boss, but I didn't get your typing done on time because I was letting Gerald ogle my boobies" won't cut it (or will it? I have never actually tried peddling this excuse...).

Lately Gerald has been giving me a daily reminder about his upcoming holiday. He'll be going away for the entire month of July on a sweaty sex romp in Thailand's red light district leisurely jaunt to merry old England. He's been telling me that I'll need to email him my exam results when I get them on July 16. I brush him off by saying "OK, I'll do that" while my inner voice says, "Chh, yeah right"

Today Gerald brought up the topic of emailing again, and decided that he'd give me his personal email address ("because there's no way in hell you're getting mine" I thought). I tore off a scrap of paper for him, on which he very studiously wrote:

Gerald_LastName

Oh, Gerald.

It reminded me of when one of my high school friends was trying to get her mother an email address. As Hotmail's front page loaded up, the mother protested, "But I don't want hotmail, I want email"

LOL, old people find email confusing.