Awkward Lunch

I should stop trying to be nice.

We have a new addition to your team. When we were organising a group lunch to a Japanese restaurant offering lunchtime promotion, I suggested inviting the whole team despite some of the colleagues expressing reservations and wanted to keep to the usual lunch khaki. I thought an informal lunch would be a good opportunity to bring everyone closer.

Of course, I was proven wrong again.

It was an awkward one hour. The conversations were stiff. As girls, we could not help getting excited over the impending delivery of oneof our colleagues. the new person sounded abit uncomfortable especially when we touched on epidural and other stuffs relating to delivery. We also did not hvae alot of common topics.

Was it strictly due to rong frequency or was it due to simply generation gap? The new person was about 2 years younger than me and might be the youngest among our group.

After the lunch, one of my closest colleagues subtly hinted to me that she viewed lunch time as personal time and would prefer to spend it with people she was more comfortable with. Uh-oh, me and my stupid ideas. Perhaps, other than thinking from the new person's perspective, I should also respect the wishes of my other team members.