Scary Friday

One of the things I love about my job is flextime. Monday through Thursday I work nine hours, and Friday I work four. While I hate getting up at the wee hours in the morning in order to get home before dark on those nine-hour work days, I absolutely adore being able to leave the office at 10:00 a.m. on Fridays.

Another thing I like about my job is the fact that my boss doesn't bother me much. She trusts her workers to do their jobs, and expects them to let her do hers. A fine arrangement for me.

Because my office and her office are on opposite ends of the suite, and because I am dismissed at 10:00 a.m., I rarely see my boss on Fridays. I rarely see anyone in the office on Fridays. As a result, I don't take a lot of care in my grooming prior to work on Fridays. I figure I'm just going to work up a sweat doing all that laundry and house cleaning when I get home.

One morning my boss had to talk to me about an issue that had cropped up. She walked up behind me, and when I spun around in my chair to face her, she expressed a mixture of pity and horror as she took a couple steps back. "Do you feel okay today?" Surprised, I questioned, "yeah, why do you ask?" "Well," she said, "you just look kind of grey and pale."

My boss is a very intelligent woman, but doesn't possess a lot of social skills and comes from the flower-child generation that is all natural all the time. I don't think she shaves her legs. Ew.

I chuckled at her concern for my health and told her, "It's Friday; I always look like this on Fridays." After allowing a second or two of growing confusion on her part I said, "I'm not wearing any make-up."

She apologized profusely and seemed genuinely embarrassed for pointing out how horrendously ugly, contagious, and scary I look in my natural state. I haven't seen her on a Friday since that incident. It's kind of comforting to know I have the power to inspire shock and awe simply by bearing my naked face.

Boo!