Gossip, Weddings, and Manipulation

Chapter 11 - Party Planning

I walk into our Monday morning meeting and bring coffee for both Laurel and Tara.  They both smile.

Laurel takes a sip of coffee and says, “Vivek, you’re a god!”

Ron walks in and asks, “Where’s my coffee?”

“You’re not pretty enough.” I respond.

Ron goes up to Laurel and swigs a sip of her coffee.  She grabs it back from him.  You’re not pretty enough for me to share my coffee.

“Why do I feel like I’m being pushed out?”

“Because you are. You’re the boss and you’re always grumpy. You just yell and do very little work.  So go back to yelling but at someone else so we can actually launch this project,”  Laurel says.

“Tara and Vivek I need to see the mock-ups soon.  When will they be ready?”

Ron doesn’t leave and just watches Laurel in action and gives her a look.

Laurel turns around and places her right hand on her hip, “Aren’t you leaving?”

“You’ll be there for the afternoon meeting where I will get an update on this project right?” Ron asks hesitantly.

“Nothing’s going to be updated if you don’t let us work.” Laurel retorts.

Tara and I just sit there in the background watching the back and forth between Ron and Laurel.  It almost feels like we should leave and let these two work things out.

I cough to break the stand off.

“Fine I’m leaving,” a floored Ron says.

“Okay, where were we?”

A few hours later at the monthly team meeting.

As usual our meetings never start on time.  You’d think with the number of computers, clocks, alarms in our office we could actually start a meeting on time.

“Hey Tara isn’t it almost Diwali? Aren’t you going to hold your Diwali party? Because we’ve already told all the Genki guys what an awesome party you throw.” Chen asked while we waited for everyone to arrive for the weekly team meeting.

“I don’t know Chen, my apartment isn’t that big that I can fit everyone.  Maybe we can all go to a restaurant for Diwali.” Tara responded.

“Come on we have to find a way.  We can’t play teen pati at a restaurant, jam to Bollywood, and get completed wasted on your exotic cocktails.  And let’s not forget no restaurant food compares to your cooking.  We just have to find a place big enough.” Tarek said.

(Teen pati is like three card poker).

“A place big enough for what?” Ron asked as he walked into the meeting.

One of my team members, David said, “For Tara’s amazing Diwali party.  Apparently, she throws a hell of a party.  Now that we’re one team we all want in too.”

“Is it just the tech team?” Ron asked.

We were ten minutes late already as it is, herding programmers to get to a meeting on time is like herding cats.  If it weren’t my boss I would have cut the conversation, but it was my boss so I patiently waited as the party was discussed.

“Yes, it’s just something I do every year for my team.” Tara responded.

“Well isn’t the whole company a team?” Ron smirked.

“Well, all of you are definitely not going to fit into my apartment!” Tara responded.

“We’ll do it at my place and you can invite the company and we can all see what a Diwali party is like.” Ron said.