Before I go into the details of my post, I have to say, “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ALI!!!!”

The lovely (and tough) Pat Benetar inspires today’s title.

Yesterday was my second and last day of formal training for my new job. All went well, and I’m having great fun with my co-workers. My boss took us out to an Irish pub for dinner. Most of us had fish and chips. YUM! It was a good end to a great trip… or so I thought.

When we returned to the hotel, one of the East Coast managers was waiting in the hotel bar for us to all have a few drinks. I met him during my first week of work and saw him in the office earlier in the afternoon. Somewhere along the line, I must have given him the impression that I was a fragile, easily offended girl. Maybe it’s the blonde hair, the fact that I sometimes wear pink, or that I was relatively quiet during the political discussion the boys were having in the office before dinner. Who knows? He did get one thing right: I am a girl.

We were chatting away and having a great time, but it seemed like he would stop himself from finishing some of his sentences/stories. He would look at me and then comment about not wanting to be inappropriate; I can’t remember his exact wording. Finally, I looked at him directly and said, “Look, you don’t have to censor yourself around me. I’m a big girl, and this isn’t my first rodeo. You aren’t going to offend me or hurt my feelings.“

He replied, with a very proud look on his face, “You don’t know me.“

“YOU don’t know ME!” I immediately retorted. I almost regretted it the second it came out of my mouth; after all, I was the new kid on the block; I didn’t need to go around pissing senior managers off.

My boss thought it was a most excellent comeback and promptly gave me a fist bump. At first, the manager didn’t say anything, but he looked a little stung. So I decided to dig myself in deeper by saying, “You know, if you come through with that new account, I’ll be back out here in NY, and then you can try to offend me all you want.”

He looked at my boss and said, “Did she REALLY just say ‘if I PULL-THROUGH with that account’?“

Thank goodness my boss had my back and replied, “Yep!“

So, the manager and I verbally sparred the rest of the night. It was pretty fun, and that was a fabulous end to an awesome trip.

UPDATE 01/28/2009: I later found out that before that night, the manager had been worried about sending me to client sites, thinking that they would eat me alive. Little did he know…