My Frat Boys
Four days later away from my 'frat boys' and missing them badly.
My 'frat boys' - a term of endearment to the 10 engineers and architects I have worked with for three years prior to this pending promotion to a new post. I can only describe them as a bunch of surrogate brothers who have relentlessly doted and spoiled me. In the same way, they would often gang up on me - teasing, roughening me up and just give me a hard time one minute and then totally sweet and kind the next. Yes, we are a skit of oddities if you were a fly on the office wall. Yet I miss the simplicity and straight-forwardness of dealing with mostly male co-workers. Females tend to get jealous of each other and there is always an element of cattiness and competition regardless how long you'd already established a relationship with each other.
Today they sweetly teased me over our communal lunch that they were 'proud of me' for not getting the new post get to my head. I am, afterall, now a very 'powerful' female staff in our office (allow me few minutes while I burst into laughter...).
Sometimes, the sincerity of such statements can be misconstrued especially when you factor in the fact that these boys are all poker faced jokers. But at the end of the day, just as he was leaving the office, I ran into one of the architects and more seriously, he told me again that indeed it was the general sentiment amongst my 'frat boys'. Having worked with him the longest, he said it was similar to watching their child grow up and accomplish something significant.
"You make us really proud of you" he emphasized in that tone that made me tear up.
Throbbing headache from the work I had to finish today and the protocol and politics that I now have to deal with daily, I feel somehow justified that for all that I have given up, it has been worth it.
Still, I miss my boys.
My 'frat boys' - a term of endearment to the 10 engineers and architects I have worked with for three years prior to this pending promotion to a new post. I can only describe them as a bunch of surrogate brothers who have relentlessly doted and spoiled me. In the same way, they would often gang up on me - teasing, roughening me up and just give me a hard time one minute and then totally sweet and kind the next. Yes, we are a skit of oddities if you were a fly on the office wall. Yet I miss the simplicity and straight-forwardness of dealing with mostly male co-workers. Females tend to get jealous of each other and there is always an element of cattiness and competition regardless how long you'd already established a relationship with each other.
Today they sweetly teased me over our communal lunch that they were 'proud of me' for not getting the new post get to my head. I am, afterall, now a very 'powerful' female staff in our office (allow me few minutes while I burst into laughter...).
Sometimes, the sincerity of such statements can be misconstrued especially when you factor in the fact that these boys are all poker faced jokers. But at the end of the day, just as he was leaving the office, I ran into one of the architects and more seriously, he told me again that indeed it was the general sentiment amongst my 'frat boys'. Having worked with him the longest, he said it was similar to watching their child grow up and accomplish something significant.
"You make us really proud of you" he emphasized in that tone that made me tear up.
Throbbing headache from the work I had to finish today and the protocol and politics that I now have to deal with daily, I feel somehow justified that for all that I have given up, it has been worth it.
Still, I miss my boys.