Off the Clock

[zingerella]

 After work I took the Tiny Perfect Bike up to a friend’s place to pick something up. I’d not been to this friend’s place before, and I needed to stop and check the address on my phone, so I pulled up onto the sidewalk to check my phone. A fellow was standing outside the pub in front of which I pulled up, having a smoke. As I checked my phone, he

Comments

[littlegirltoast]

do you think there's any chance it was rom-com damage, and he thought addressing you that way would ignite some kind of spark between you? like he just doesn't know (a) how to be playful, or (b) whom not to be playful with?

or was it sheer, genuine malice?

I'm sure you're right to have him not ruin your day, but the idea of him shakes me up because his entitlement is so evident, it leads me to consider the outcomes if the same entitlement were to be displayed by an even slightly more malign figure.

shudder.

[curgoth]

My first thought was that dude had been to a PUA (pick up artist) seminar; apparently one of the tricks to make women sleep with you is to mock them and make them feel insecure before they are wowed by your confident skeeziness.

[curgoth]

Negging! Right! I had forgotten the term. As in "Dude, negging is not going to get you laid here. Move along."

[zingerella]

Good grief! That's a technique? For doing anything other than making people think you're a complete asshole? Wow. I'm so sad to know that.

[zingerella]

I can't say as I was entirely unshaken by the exchange (hence posting about it). It's not that I felt that I was in any danger at the time, but I did feel that the lengths to which he went to try to make me feel bad were quite out of proportion to the import of the exchange. It was a bit unsettling to realise that he really, really cared about trying to make me feel bad.