breakfast with a side of creepy

Every Wednesday at work the chefs make hot breakfast that is always way too good to pass up. I’m not a breakfast person but the smell of bacon and eggs walking into work really does brighten up my day. Anyway, one of the chefs is from Jamaica and is a great cook and really nice to me but his niceness often verges on inappropriateness. He has a wife and three kids but it doesn’t stop him from his attempts to hit on me. I say attempts because, well, they are particularly poor attempts. Maybe it is a cultural barrier or language barrier thing, I’m not really sure but our conversation this morning was noticeably strange and his comments often make me wonder where some guys get their “lines” from.


Since I went on vacation two weeks in a row the chef noticed I was gone for a while so this morning he was asking me all about it. He said, “Next time you tell me when you go and I will go and be your body guard.” Now, this isn’t so bad except for the fact that he’s about 5 feet 2 inches and probably weighs 20 pounds less than I do. When I think of Jamaican men (which is almost never) I imagine huge, black guys or Bob Marley type guys with dreads. So it’s pretty comical that this guy, who’s side profession is a barber, thinks he could be my body guard on vacation. What are you going to do? Comb them to death?


Not only is this guy super small but his accent makes it physically impossible to understand him. He speaks Spanish, French and English on top of a Jamaican accent and sounds like he mixes them all together when he talks. So this morning, as I am waiting for my eggs looking a little tired, when he said, “Don’t fall asleep on me baby. You will wake up someplace else because I will take you away and you will wake up asking what happened”, I had to ask him to repeat himself. Oh no, I heard him correctly. He wants to drug and kidnap me. Two scrambled eggs have never taken longer to cook in my entire life.


Once he handed me my eggs I could not get out of there fast enough. I try my absolute hardest to just laugh and nod and be polite because he is making my food every day but his comments are just absurd. I used to work at a country club when I was younger surrounded by chefs so I’m no stranger to “sexual harassment” (I use quotes because I just really brushed everything off or joked right back) and I know that how he’s talking to me, while inappropriate in the workplace, is totally harmless and usually just makes me laugh once I get out of there. I’m not about to make a big deal over what he’s saying so there’s nothing left to do but shrug him off as nicely as possible.


For example, a few hours after the kidnapping conversation I walked back into the cafeteria to get a cup of tea and there he is sitting at a table on his break. Of course I got the “Baby come sit with me!” heckling as I walked by but, as I told him, “a girl’s gotta work”. I got my tea and as I walked back passed him on my way out he was playing “Pretty Woman” on his iPhone. His version of the lyrics went “Pretty woman, walking out of the dining room…”. Imagine that in a French/Spanish/Jamaican accent and that about sums up my morning. So I’ll take the amusement at work any day but if he could just leave his creepy threats at home with his wife and kids that would be great, too.