V-Day

Someone on my old team came up with the idea to leave heart-shaped chocolates on everyone's desk for Valentine's Day this year (using the money that was raised by the social committee), and they roped me in to do my new team. So I diligently laid out the chocolates. The first person to come in, who is in the same sub-team as me, came over.

D: Fodder, did you leave something on my desk?
Me: Yep!
D: Was it a Valentine's Day chocolate?
Me: Yep!
Me: Don't worry, I left one on everyone else's desk, too.
D: Thank f@#$.

Great first impression I'm making on my new team, as the only female developer, and the person who "brings people together". I think I do have to be a bit careful though, as I don't want to give the wrong impression. My new boss speaks pretty freely, but I think there are some topics that he considers over the line. We were talking about some wedding TV show that he watches, and he said one of the brides was accusing her husband of having an affair because he was talking to another woman. I joked that every time he spoke to me, we were having an affair.

Normally, when people make jokes with him, he'll play along, but this time, he laughed, but didn't reply. I guess that's one of his lines. He is actually pretty close to all of his direct reports, and he often asks us about our personal lives as well as our work, but he seems to often make it very clear that getting too close is inappropriate. One of the other developers changed his background picture to a photo of D, and while he normally leaves his background picture when we change it to silly things like Donald Trump, he was very quick to remove the photo of D.

It was a nice thought though, and as other people came into the office this morning, they were all pleasantly surprised to find a chocolate on their desk. Sometimes it's the little things that make people happy.

In a nice surprise for me, MrFodder got me a card this year (we don't usually do anything for Valentine's Day).

It's pilfered from The Simpsons, but the thought was there.

(Edit: I didn't meant to sound like I didn't like the card, I just wanted to attribute it to The Simpsons! I do like the card, it's exactly MrFodder's sense of humour.)