Chelsea
I Spend a Lot of Time Thinking About Ninja Turtles.
Dear Narcissist P.S. I'm not particularly on my manager's good side at the moment after coming in late a few times this month.
My company doesn't necessarily have a “no dating co-workers” policy. It isn't exactly a practice they endorse either, though. I'm not sure I want to dip my pen in the company ink, per se, but one of my managers has a sister that I find exceptionally attractive. Do I need to ask his permission before asking her out?
— Obsessed in Oak Cliff
Oh cool! This sounds like a movie plot to one of those not-very-funny movies where a dude is trying to hook up with a particular girl but crazy random happenstance occurs, leading to eight levels of humiliation before he finally gets to “dip [his] pen in the company ink.”
First of all, it might help if you lose the creepy metaphors. Second, as you acknowledge, none of this really applies since it's your manager's sister, and not someone you actually work with.
I think that you should ask out your boss's sister, but maybe in the most cordial and professional way possible. Can you write her an official memo? Maybe wait until the company party and show her all the photocopies of your ass that you've been meticulously collecting since 2007?
That's what we call a win/win.
If your boss has a problem with it, he might punish you, so be prepared for that. One time, I got punished for stealing my boss's cat, which is totally comparable to the situation you're in. In my defense, that cat totally preferred my company and was completely OK being shoved into a burlap sack and whisked away on my motorcycle (er… I mean fixie). I mean, he probably wouldn't even have known I was the one who stole his cat except that I left a conspicuous trail of breadcrumbs, due to the fact that I'm hypoglycemic and had some bread in my back pocket for a snack.
Narcissist,
I'm a really good friend, or so I'm told. Problem is, every friend who tells me this quickly stops being my friend. Am I really a good friend or are these friends bullshitting me?
— Deserted in Downtown
Maybe you're such a good friend that they feel really guilty because they know that they are an inadequate friend, so they desert you so that they can keep a pristine image of themselves in mind.
Or maybe you smell. Seriously, you might just be a good friend and have a terrible body odor. Maybe your friends thought that they could suffer through it, but then, later, the scent got so extreme that they decided that the time wasn't worthwhile.
Are you a ninja turtle? I imagine that they smell really weird, what with all the sewers and pizza. Wouldn't your body be so confused by that smell? Like, you wanna eat the pizza really badly but it also smells like poop because you're in the sewer? And how do they get delivery down there? Is there one reluctant pizza delivery man whose job it is to take “sewer duty,” where he feeds a group of turtles, a rat and, potentially, a very sexually confused woman named April?
My advice is to go down to the sewers and make friends with any turtles/rats/red-headed women that you can find down there.
They probably won't mind the smell.
Dear Narcissist,
I just moved to town and a friend got me a job. It pays great, but it isn't what I want to be doing and I'm already unhappy with it. A mutual friend of ours said that I should stick it out until I learn everything I need to. He says I'll get more comfortable and won't hate it as much. Mostly, though, I just want to quit and move on to something else. Can I quit without pissing off my friend?
— Indecisive in Irving
Well, your friend is probably going to be pretty irritated if you quit. Not that that should necessarily stop you, since you aren't happy with what you're doing, but you should probably break it to your friend gently.
Perhaps you should take your friend on a hot air balloon ride, and while they are either enthralled with the scenery or screaming their lungs out due to a fear of heights, you can tell them about your plans to move on.
Seriously, hot air balloons solve every problem.
(Except probably a fear of hot air balloons. Or calculus problems).
One time, I had to break some tough news to a friend so I broke into his apartment and destroyed all of his vases. He was so concerned about his vases that he didn't mind as much that I had rear-ended his parked car. Unfortunately, since I did both of those things, I was still in the dog house. So, if you go this route, maybe you should pay someone else to break your friends vases.
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