this_is_canada e_o_i Continued from I_didn't_ask_for_it, it being my boss' lectures and etc. Today he was harping on a small error related to time_management. When he asked a leading, condescending question, I stood up, fed up. "Then it's 1:45, it's time for my break," I said, taking my bag and marching into the kitchen. He said not to leave, that we were in the middle of a meeting. "I just, I can't take this right now." He let me walk away but showed up at the kitchen door. "Okay, I didn't mean to interrupt your lunch, but what do you mean, leaving like that?? Don't you think it was rude?" I admitted it was. "I'm sorry." He went in the door. Stood in the kitchen and talked while I, attempting calmness, ate my lunch systematically: 1) forking potatoes and cooked veggies, 2) breaking my bagel in half and nibbling each half in turn and 3) peeling my orange, divesting it of the middle's bitter white strands and popping it into my mouth, section by section This took about half an hour. At first, B. had seemed calm in the face of my childish huff, but he soon worked himself up into a huff of his own. "I don't want to say I'm 'warning' you, but this is kind of a warning." He said that if I demonstrate such "attitude" front of the new admin, he would have "no choice but to let me go." "I agree that was rude. I shouldn't have got up and left like that. I'm sorry. But," I looked at my food. "Sometimes I feel I have a choice between seeming sad or angry, and I'm tired of...of going with sad." I said something related to having pride or self-possession; my words weren't quite like that, though. "I mean, at one point I made a sad face and you told me 'my face wasn't professional.' I remember that!" "I meant your expression...." He went on to justify himself. I got frustrated again. "Well, you can't police facial expressions! I mean, this is Canada!" He blinked, bemused. "What does Canada have to do with it?" That wasn't the sort of thing I'd wanted to say. It wasn't nationality that was the issue, but his view that being overbearing was the way to manage employees, which led to absurdities like the one above. Why did my brain-voice interface fall facedown into clichés, even prejudice?! "I didn't mean that," I said, abashed and stammering. "I mean, I'm sure Iran is good in ways Canada isn't. I didn't mean to be racist. I'm sorry." He seemed amused. "No, I didn't take it like that." And he said something like, "But you can't assume you know what it's like in all of Canada. Or even Montreal. I've been a Montrealer longer than you." "I know." I looked at my potatoes. Small potatoes, few left. (His math was a little off if you count "Montreal" as "Montreal island," though not if you count it as the city proper.) "I mean..." But I couldn't explain it well. I was embarrassed. I let him talk. It isn't socially acceptable to make faces like THIS (mocking grin, rolled eyes) when someone's talking to you, is it? Even just to a friend. That wasn't the face he'd objected to me making (on a different day). Mine was a sad, scrunched-up face, like I was going to cry...even though I hadn't, not then. "I know you weren't making *that* face," he said, anticipating possible disagreement. "It's just an example. You see there are some things that are more socially acceptable, more professional, more what's accepted in an office." But he seemed conscious now of making me feel upset, though it wasn't this I was upset about. "I wasn't meaning to mock you." I didn't think he was. I just thought that making faces wasn't the point. It was more that whatever tiny thing I did, he'd find something to object to in it. But that's a bit of an exaggeration. ... Takeaway: I'm only patriotic when I feel that my country is one in which I'm free to make sad faces. Wasn't that the ideal on which Canada was founded? The U.S. had the Declaration of Independence. Canada had the Declaration of the Freedom to Make Sad Faces Without Being Accused of Insubordination. But not the Declaration of the Right to Walk Away from Lectures on Time Management If It's Lunchtime. This is an important distinction. 230814 ... epitome of incomprehensibility Maybe his wordiness was useful this time. It allowed him to talk himself out of being angry, after a while. And it gave me time to consider: no, I shouldn't quit now - that would seem just as childish and impulsive as getting up and walking away. 230814 what's it to you? who go blather from