Martoons

Today: Miss No manipulates some of Thomas’ attention.

Cast of characters

Miss No

Thomas

*

To divert Thomas’ attention from the hungry housewives, No started scheduling maximum numbers of marathon ‘work evaluation’ sessions after hours to get him in her office as much as possible so she could flirt.

* Do you think her flirting works on Thomas? *

“We want to help you fit in here. We had waygooks before here but they didn’t last. They weren’t a good fit. Did midnight runs – both of them.”

Thomas at that time was naive – a complete novice about his newly adopted culture.

However from martial arts movies he’d seen and Koreans he’d met in Edmonton, society or the larger cause came first and the individual a distant second.

Employees, for example, totally submitted to their bosses.

So he obediently and regularly attended Miss No’s feedback sessions even though they were late at night and he was exhausted from teaching all day.

He did, however, wonder why she locked the office door and laid the perfume on thick.

And even though he’d already picked up the fact that Koreans were quite ‘touchy’ with people they were close to, he wasn’t sure that extended to bosses basically giving complete body massages (leaving out a few areas of course) to their new Canadian employees.

“Miss No, thanks for the rub, but really I’m already feeling pretty good,” Thomas said in his third or fourth (he’d lost count) feedback session that first week.

“Tight muscles aren’t really my hang-up at this time. If you really want to do something for me, how about order some food?”

“Sorry to be so direct but to tell you the truth, I’m kind of hungry. I haven’t really eaten a solid meal this week. Even some fruit would be good. Wondering if I could get a cash advance?”

“Foolishly, I brought some money from Canada but I didn’t exchange enough of it at the airport. And I can’t find any banks around Chinju here that will do that.”

“They look at the money, think it’s cute, and that’s the end of it…”

No was still running her hands all over his arms, fascinated with their covering of steel wool hair.

“Don’t worry about that,” she said, her eyes all googly.

“I will buy anything you need. And right now, I will take you to dinner.”

“Oh,” Thomas said with relief, although his personal space violation red lights were flashing. “Can’t argue with that logic.”

He awkwardly slipped out of her grip, got up and collected his stuff.

Having taken a few sociology classes at university some years ago, he was quickly putting together a profile of Miss No.

She was a new boss, he’d figured out, and was marking out her turf furiously.

She was trying to get him under her thumb.

* Will Thomas push against Miss No’s advances? *

*

Tomorrow: Miss No gets a little too touchy.