Expectations of Empathy

This morning at work, I was returning from a meeting and passed a colleague. As she passed, I sensed it.

She was asking someone on my team a question when I sidled up to her and waited for her to finish her query. As she turned, I simply put my arms around her. 

"Hi Nadia," I said quietly, "I think you need a hug right now."

And she just started crying. There in my arms, she held on and sobbed. 

I think it's because I know what it's like to hold in so much pain, and contain all the grief in a very tight vessel that you think you've buried deep inside that I am able to sense it so acutely and tangibly in others.

I recall recently talking to someone very important to me and we were discussing our lives, and also that thing about being empaths. I recall pondering the idea that I sometimes tell myself that I am able to absorb all the pain that is out there in the world and perhaps help mitigate the anguish and despair that is out there, if perhaps somehow, even a little bit, it makes the world we live in a better place.

I don't know. Maybe it's a way of surviving for me. I've done my share of locking out people and pushing away those who care simply from a deeply entrenched emotional claustrophobia that maybe everything that comes my way is just a way of me getting my share.

Then again, just the way I spotted Nadia throughout the day chatting with colleagues, making jokes, cackling to her own surprise, I can smile to myself to know that perhaps just by my own small gestures I can provide comfort to others and help lighten the loads they are carrying just by acknowledging that I care.

There'll always be the people who will make sure you know that they care, not by assuming you know, but by their behaviour. It's also ok to let go of the naive idea that you can ever be so important to be someone's #1. Be your own #1. 

Real Talk 6

As my life isn't an easy one, now is the time to tell you that while I was working my full time day job at HotlineBling central (not real name, do not google this on Google Businesses), I was also working an evening job. My "glamour" job.

No, I was not a strip dancer.

But I was the "face" of a cooking show and got to be on television and go to shows and stuff; this job overflowed onto weekends, so that's pretty much where all my life was at that stage.

It was definitely a fun and cool job, and it was very laidback and sometimes all we seemed to do was go out to the back on off-show breaks and sit on picnic benches and sing Enrique and Adele and discuss our coworker's lovelife problems with his boyfriend, or every other person's problem with their boyfriend, and inhale the secondhand fumes of the great outdoors and marijuana while the sun went down.

But the job also required every member to follow up with anyone who was remotely interested in the show, especially as its main objective was to sell the very cookware line that we used on the shows. So this meant that we all to dedicate 75% of our time to sitting at a desk and....wait for it....making follow-up calls!

See where I am getting at? I hear someone singing that Lion King song, shut up.


OK the irony is that this is where I actually stopped being the desknerd and became a blossoming flower because I was great at talking to other people. Except that I was usually in my office spending all that time talking to my boyfriend.

Everyone knew this actually, and it was sort of an inside joke, but at the same time everyone in the office was in love with my love story and were all rooting for me.

Except the new recruits or boss who invariably picked up the line: "Hello?"

"Ehm, Priya please."

"May I ask who's calling?"

"Huh. Just...give me Priya, I need to talk to her about...ehm....pots."



This is Part 6 of a series of "Real Talk" pieces wherein I finally talk about my real life and share some (not so) scandalous short (and sweet!) stories. To follow from the start click on the "Real Talk" label below for all posts in this series.

Real Talk 5

So I find out that Andrew was an alcoholic and he once somehow fell from the top floor balcony down to the first floor. Great place to work!

The previous receptionist, too, seemed to like alcohol a little too fondly and one day, my second day on the job, if i recall, Andrew got a call from down below and then, hanging up, looked at me and told me that I was to run downstairs and fill in for the receptionist "because she just quit her job".


I was like, "What, I'm not a freaking receptionist are you crazy, you go fill the chair". And I turned back to my work, only to find out, going downstairs for lunch, that the big boss was sitting at the receptionist's desk.

Ho ho ho.

Anyways, back to the main story line, the day after I was "coerced" into calling random CEOs for soundbites that had nothing to do with our work at all, but try telling that to the boss: I was twirling away on my desk chair when I see the boss approach.

"Hey," he said, gruffly, "We're good, right?"

I responded, "What's there not to be good about?"

"Ah, great," he nodded and went his way.

After which I found out from the graphic designer who works alongside me that he was really worried about how he treated me, forcing me to make calls.

"Oh," I said, "I just pretended to be on the phone the whole day, but he doesn't need to know that."


This is Part 5 of a series of "Real Talk" pieces wherein I finally talk about my real life and share some (not so) scandalous short (and sweet!) stories. To follow from the start click on the "Real Talk" label below for all posts in this series.

Real Talk 4

With the brutal onslaught of "I want you to make 75 calls and get 55 quotes on the site today" I decided that enough was enough and I got up and walked out.

I went to McDonald's on the corner and ordered a coffee.

While I was there I saw the guy who used to have my job ordering a Happy Meal, clad in tshirt and boxers, no longer in the office attire he used to work in when he was my supervisor. But one day he just stopped coming.

So there I was grabbing a McCafe

(and coffee for the rest of the office of whom I politely asked if they wanted a coffee and instead of politely demurring as is normal they all chimed in with a resounding "YEAH!"

"Oh geez, are you all kidding me? OK, but make sure your orders are easy,  I'm not writing anything down."

 "IQ, I WANT A LATTE BUT I HAVE NEVER HAD A LATTE SO CAN YOU TELL THEM TO PUT COFFEE AND MILK AND NO SUGAR PLEASE, BUT REMEMBER TO PUT COFFEE."

"Daisy, I am pretty sure that is what comprises a latte but yes I will tell them.")

and I see this dude looking like a bum, and I could only shake my head, wondering what weird projects our boss subjected him to. Then I remembered the alcohol:

When my supervisor-for-two-days decided to stop coming to work, I was given the directive to clear out the guy's desk in order to figure out what had to be done. In the process, I discovered a couple dozen pages with our boss's "signature" copied out a few hundred million times, and then discovered a few copies of a "reference letter" that our boss "signed" declaring that Andrew (he who gave up the job), along with being bestowed with a grand intellect and cutting-edge mental faculty, was the greatest man alive (hey, why not).

Then I opened the bottom drawer of his desk and discovered a 6-pack of beer.




This is part 4 of a series of "Real Talk" pieces wherein I finally talk about my real life and share some (not so) scandalous short (and sweet!) stories. To follow from the start click on the "Real Talk" label below for all posts in this series.

Real Talk 3

This boss of mine was pretty crazy. Mercurial (huge temper), pompous (high-falutin ideas), rich (RICH).  And he was a mean ol' nasty grinchy scrooge if he felt like it. Actually, when I have the misfortune of watching Trump speak, I am totally reminded of this boss. He was like a bad combination of both Donald Trump and Nicholas Cage.

So he stood there shoving the phone in my hand every time it somehow made it's way out of my hand, telling me to google GOOGLE and call them, QUICK.

Let me just clear the air: most of the time he was actually pretty sharp and intuitive in business matters (that is, after all, how he got so rich, and also how our company was numero uno in the niche), but in this case, between you and me, I honestly don't know.

My coworkers, not having a grande huge floor of an office suite like mine, worked one floor down, so they obviously did not believe me and thought I made this up. But no.

It was sadly true.

I called up a few numbers while he stood there. I hedged around, not even sure what I was supposed to say, what excuse to give, what to ask. I mean, I was a freaking writer, not a telephone customer service rep. So he started wagging his head furiously, getting more mad each time I mumbled through a phone call. I started giving him the side-eye even as he was frothing like he had rabies. Maybe I should call 911, I thought.

For me or him, I don't know.



This is part 3 of a series of "Real Talk" pieces wherein I finally talk about my real life and share some (not so) scandalous short (and sweet!) stories. To follow from the start click on the label below for all posts in this series.

Real Talk 2

Soon after I was made the company writer at my new job (after a series of strange and fortunate incidents that accelerated the process which occurred in my very first week), I quickly adapted to my newfangled and interdisciplinary job functions and time flew.

Then one day, after a meeting in which I relayed the manner in which our company could take off really quickly through some strategically placed communications (and having ended the meeting rather tentatively as our boss was sitting as if paralyzed by my information), obviously having recovered, my boss came storming through my office.

"GRAB THE TELEPHONE, FIND SOME PHONE NUMBERS."

..Um?..

Basically, he decided that the best way to get "quotes to place on our website" (somehow this is what my comprehensive, informative, and statistical strategy boiled down to in his head?) was to call "famous people" spontaneously and ask them a question ("anything") real quick, then write down whatever they said as evidence of their endorsement and hang up.


And he picked me for the job.



This is part 2 of a series of "Real Talk" pieces wherein I finally talk about my real life and share some (not so) scandalous short (and sweet!) stories. To follow from the start click on the label below for all posts in this series.

Real Talk

Many long years ago, after working in various retail jobs during university, and having conquered all the customer service floors with my people skills and makeup artistry skills, I decided that I wanted to work in an office.

My reasons weren't exactly ambitious. I wanted a job where I could literally just sit down behind a computer all day and get paid for it. But then again, that already sums up what pretty much all of us want at one point or other.

As unoriginal as it was, this was the epitome of my 'working girl in the world' dream. To be sure, I had--and have--much more lofty ambitions as well, i.e. to be a high-ranking enterpreneur; a hotshot boss lady; a famous celebrity (well, at least that one I can check off), but there is this quiet, introverted me that loves, and prefers, being in the background, the backstage if you will, thus this was my quiet goal.

Point to be noted: this was my goal as soon as I realized what fun it was to sit at a computer all day, a feat very much assisted by discovering MSN (remember MSN?) very late in life--and blogging.


When I got called in for an interview at my First Real Office Job Ever, the owner of the company asked me what I really wanted to do: what were my unbridled dreams? So, I decided, rather than giving the usual answer tailored to the job description or company, to give the unbridled truth.

"I want to be a writer."

He nodded. Gave me an appraising look and said, "Come back tomorrow."

This is part 1 of a series of "Real Talk" pieces wherein I finally talk about my real life and share some (not so) scandalous short (and sweet!) stories.