At yet another grad drinks recently, I was introduced to the Divorcee, a major flirt and quasi-attractive.

A few days later, the Divorcee phoned me at work. But having been accustomed only to hearing the Heartbreaker on the other end of the work phone, I mistook the Divorcee for the zero flirt and ultra attractive Heartbreaker.

“Heartbreaker? What’s up? You coming for Gold Button’s birthday tonight?” I asked.

Silence.

“Hello?” I whispered loudly.

“Is this Polly?” a deep voice asked.

“Yes.” I asked, “You’re not Heartbreaker?”

“Who do you think it is?” the deep voice quizzed.

“Oh shit. Divorcee? Is that you?” It had suddenly occurred to me that the Divorcee could have got my number on the internal work contacts.

“What do you think?”

“Divorcee? No, wait. Heartbreaker. No, Divorcee?” At this point, the rest of my team began to snigger at my side of the conversation.

“Baby, I’m hurt. You think I’m Heartbreaker?” The Divorcee feigned disappointment.

“Well, I only ever really get calls from him on this number,” I justified.

“I’m sure you have plenty of men calling you.”

“No, pretty much just him. You sound alike.”

“Does he have a deep sexy voice like this?”

This continued for a while until I realised that the conversation could potentially turn Easygoing Manager into Stick-Up-Bum Manager.

Trouble. I smelt trouble.

If history is anything to go by, the Divorcee is exactly the type of fire I play with and then get burnt by.

To be continued. Possibly.

Amongst the grads, I am fortunate have enough work to wade through the day. But there are many times when working really involves email conversations with friends.

The Heartbreaker works on the floor above me. He is not into emailing. He is a man of spoken word and prefers to call me on my extension.

BRRRING BRRRING…BRRRING BRRRING…goes the telephone everyday at eleven.

“Huuullo, Rather-Large-Bank, Polly speaking,” I answer in my best phone voice.

“Hey, it’s me. You busy?” the Heartbreaker asks.

“Yes, I am. I am very busy and very important.” I say in mock seriousness.

“Really? Doing what?” the Heartbreaker asks with a tinge of envy.

“Running SQL queries to extract data from GDW.” Acronyms make everything sound important. At this point, I see Manager who sits two desks away, give me a thumbs up sign.

“Right.”

“And I'm clustering PCA data with the latest data from CB and YB,” I smugly added.

“You wanna have lunch?” he asks, even though it’s only eleven.

“Absolutely,” I answer without hesitation.