Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Never say "no"

Never say no to your coworkers about anything. This is the lesson I learned on Monday. Around 3 PM, I was debating if I should go in the staff room and get a coke, or have a cup of tea or maybe just ask someone to make a pot of coffee for moi or just go out for a walk and get a cup coffee from my favorite coffee shop of the town. Apparently, I said it out loud and Charlotte who was freaking out for some unforeseen reasons or maybe because some deadline was approaching and she was all worked up, screamed from her office “Sukrit, I have coffee in my thermos”. I politely said no thank you as I am not even sure what I want at the moment besides I would rather have something else from my list than drinking coffee from some thermos where that coffee might be sitting since morning.
It wasn’t moments after that when I realized about the mistake I made. Charlotte just pouted in the beginning and Terry told me how rude it was for me to say that to her (she meant to refuse her), and someone even brought up the issue of my brat-ness and how to make me Americanized.
I thought they will get over it and move on. But its 3rd day today since that happened and these ladies are in no mood to leave this behind. Seems like they wanna live all their life with this as at every step I am being reminded about how wrong I was.
Now come-on, why would I drink old rotten coffee from a thermos? What was so wrong about saying no to that? And above all, I was not even sure if I particularly wanted coffee. I could have gone out and would have gotten Iced Latté or something.
So the morale of this story is to NEVER say no to anyone’s generosity, be it is some old coffee or some fungus ridden brownie or a soggy cookie. Just take it with grace and spill it, throw it or do whatever else when they are not looking and shower them with compliments like “the coffee was delicious”, and then ask “what kind it was” or “this is the best brownie I have tasted in my life” .. yup that is the American way. Oh joy!!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

its better to say "no" and move on than holding on to the rotten brownie!! if u be polite and true unto urself....u wud make the person think...maybe it wasnt him...probably my coffee isnt good....and u cud inspire folks to change....

u don need to convince anyone that you are polite....jus be polite:) let it radiate and convince by its very nature and zero pretence!! :) enjoy!! :):)

bottom line....there is no bargain for bliss!! u be in bliss...radiate...u wud never hurt or offend anyone!!

Sukrit said...

Aap and aapki philosophies ... "sadar parnaam ram ji" :-)