You know those people you encounter every once in a while that give you the creeps and make you want to run from them? There’s one such guy here at work, and not only does he just seems creepy in general, but that creepiness has been magnified since he has decided he likes me.
The first time I ran into him, there was me, him, and another girl in the break room. This was back before I cut my hair, and I had it up in a long ponytail. The other girl in the break room was also wearing her hair in a ponytail. He stops us, asks if we work together, and it’s a “thing” that we both had our hair in ponytails. He also asked since we didn’t work together if we were close friends and had planned to wear our hair the same. He said something to the effect of not having seen someone wear their hair in a ponytail before, and was even more surprised at two women wearing their hair the same. Um. It’s only a freaking ponytail, not some elaborate hair-do. There are over 1000 people in this building – certainly he’s had to see at least 2 women wearing ponytails before. I could tell that the other girl was getting the same creepy feeling that I was, and she wanted to take off as well.
When this guy is around me, my skin crawls and I want to hide. Unfortunately, he works on the floor with the break room. So if I need something to drink or snack on, I risk running into him. Even if I’m not stopping at his floor, I still run the risk of seeing him – since there’s usually someone getting on or off the elevator on that floor. In the past, he’s spotted me when waiting for an elevator back up to my floor, so he came out of his area, and stopped next to me to talk. I wanted to run away, but I couldn’t; since we both wanted that up elevator. When the elevator finally came, though, 2 other people had just walked up. They got on the elevator with me, and when the nice guy held the door open for the creepy guy to board too, Creepy Guy said “Oh no, thanks, I don’t need the elevator” and then he walked back into his area. *shudders* UGH! That couldn’t have made it any more obvious that the only reason he was out there was to stalk me.
Sadly, I’m “too” polite/nice/kind/etc for my own good sometimes. If he’s standing there talking, I just can’t be rude and ignore him. If he asks a question, I’ll answer – but I try to keep it as vague as possible, since I don’t want him knowing too much about me. Because of this, he knows my first name. Lucky for me, though, my name is unique, and I never spelled it for him. Somehow, he figured out the spelling of my first name, and once he did that – he had no problem finding me, since my name IS so unique. About 2 weeks ago, he sent me an email via work with a very bad pun based on the name of my dept, and asking how I am. Email? Email I have absolutely no problems at ignoring. After all, I didn’t solicit the email from him and it has absolutely nothing to do with work, so there is no reason for me to answer it. Especially since we’re technically not supposed to have personal emails at work. 😉 I’ve been lucky and been able to avoid him since then, too. I almost ran into him last week, but managed to duck back into the break room a split second before he turned around and saw me. Once I heard the elevator and knew that he’d gotten on the down, I went out into the hall and waited for the up elevator.
I need to find a way to be nice and let this guy know “no way, no how, please don’t even talk to me” and still be polite about it – since that’s the bane of my existence. Plus, we do work in the same building so I don’t want to be rude. But I also don’t want to have to pray every time I get on an elevator or go to the break room that I’m not going to run into him. I don’t want to have to keep hiding from him. I don’t like feeling so creeped out either though.