blindsided

Well.  I’ve officially told this story twice already, once to Emily and once to Jake….and let me tell you, its EXHAUSTING to type it all out.  So i’m going to repost my letter to Emily, and then do some "next-day" commentary, because since I woke up this morning, I’ve thought about it a lot.
So here’s the origional message to Emily:

Oh. My. Gosh.
You will not believe how crazy my last 5 minutes of work was today! I’m still spinning!! I hostessed tonight so at 8:30 I got to go home. Well I’m cruising out the front door as Dave (Chef. basically the boss) walks in and he says "Hey are you leaving? Can I speak with you for a minute?" and pulls me into the office and offers me a chair.
First off, no one ever offers me a chair…so I knew something was up. So he starts out with this: "Well I wanted to talk to both of you (he doesn’t say who) together, but since you’ve got time right now I’ll just talk to you and the three of us can sit down and talk about this later."
So I’m thinking oh my gosh, have a been a bitch to someone or have I done something wrong or…and I come up with 10 million scenarios.
So then he continues, "I’ve received a comment about you and John (my manager!) from one of our guests and I just want to let you know that it was put out there that the two of you came off as being romantically involved."
At this point I’m doing my best to look as stunned as possible. Wanna know why? Because in all honesty, I’ve totally got a thing for him! He’s just plain killer hot, and smart, and there’s just a lot of chemistry. But he’s 28, and he’s my manager so in reality nothing whatsoever has happened.
And I had no idea I was that obvious.
So continuing on, he basically says well if that’s the case then you need to know that one of you has got to resign because that just doesn’t need to be going on in the workplace.
I spend the next 90 seconds trying to keep a shocked face and telling him, no, that nothing is going on and that I had no idea we were coming off that way. I reassure him that I am dating guys outside of work (which is only a half-lie. I would LIKE to be dating guys outside the workplace, but unfortunately it just isn’t happening.). And that I’ll check myself to make sure I’m not acting inappropriately. He thanks me for my time. I say goodnight.
Crap though!! Even if I didn’t have a tiny little crush on him, this would and will screw up my work habitat. Because now John and I will undoubtably go out of our ways to make sure that nothing suggestive is going on. We’ll avoid each other like crazy because we both love our jobs. But John is (now that Michelle is gone) probably my closest friend at work, and I don’t want to lose that! Plus it took me ages to bond with him and Scot (the other waiter) and its like I’m going to get kicked back out of the boys’ club out of paranoia. I worked hard to get in the boys’ club damnit! I don’t WANT out. Sigh.
But oh my gosh how crazy. To be honest I was really thankful it wasn’t something that I had seriously done wrong…but I was completely blindsided by this. Oh! And I learned something else too. The people who mentioned this were secret shoppers. I had no CLUE Dave and Katie regularly had secret shoppers come in. Valuable knowledge right there. Plus, if all they had to complain about was that they thought maybe John and I had something, then that means everything was great with my service! So anyway. I decided to share this with you because it’s too embaressing to share with the whole of myspace, and also it reminded me of how you like your professor.
Have a good night!

So, crazy shit.  I know.  So last night I convinced myself that everything would be okay and that work wouldn’t be affected much, that John and I would probably back off noticibly for a month or so, and then stop worrying about it. 

But today I feel a little differently.  I won’t know until I talk to John of course, but I’m seriously afraid that if Dave and Katie don’t drop this then it’ll get turned into a workplace epidimic.  Let me explain: If they for any reason decided that the whole staff should know that workplace relationships need to be avoided, and make a general announcement to everyone, then everyone’s going to avoid me, and only me.  I’m 21, and on average everyone I work with is 10 years older than me.  I’m female and there’s only two other females in the restaurant, and they don’t work as often as I do.  And then what’ll happen?  My great job will suddenly suck.  Bad.  So now I’m all anxious about going to work tonight, because Chef will have talked to John before then.  My only hope is that John will convince them that there’s nothing to worry about, and that it will end there. 
So that’s it.  I know that was annoyingly long.  I just needed to get everything out, that way I can look at it written out and maybe my brain will stop spinning so much.
Later guys!