Facebook Evan
When I worked in a corporate setting back in the 2010s, we had multiple floors in a high rise building in the middle of the gross part of Hollywood. If you’ve ever been here, you know which part I’m talking about — it smells of urine and weird men in knock-off Spiderman outfits are breakdancing on the Walk of Fame. Somehow, this is the epicenter of what tourists come to “See” when they come here. We shared a parking complex with Jimmy Kimmel Live, and you’d always be standing behind Darth Vader holding his helmet at the Coffee Bean. Leaving to get lunch was an epic adventure, and sometimes you’d get locked in overnight during a “bomb threat” and have to sleep on the day beds by the pool across the street at the Roosevelt.
Sometimes you got lucky and got to watch Spongebob get arrested in full costume through your office window.
We had several departments that did different things in advertising, and the best part was that even though we all worked in the same building, ate in the same lunch room, used the same restrooms, kitchens, and elevators — you didn’t dare speak to or make eye contact with someone who was NOT in your department. And because leaving the building was such an ordeal, we tended to just stay there all fucking day like little corporate prisoners.
Now, in Los Angeles — there’s this weird code of conduct that even occurs on the street, where you could be less than 1 foot away from a stranger and you still DO NOT under any circumstances make eye contact and say anything. This includes any sort of neighborly “hello,” “excuse me” or even a half smirk smile situation. Ask any Angeleno, and they’ll tell you it’s really confusing to go to another city and walk down the street, because people will be walking their dog, look you right in the eye and say “GOOD MORNING.” This also extends to Los Angeles nightclubs, where you must only speak to/interact with the people who came in your group. I.e., you may never approach a random stranger and say hello, or buy them a drink, or even act like you are in the same room. This is my theory on why it’s impossible to meet new people here, but that’s a story for another day.
My department was oddly split between two floors, one of which was shared with one of the most pretentious departments in the whole company. I would be doling out salad dressing from our buffet directly across from these guys, hear their entire conversation, and they would pretend I was invisible. Jake Gyllenhaal was once photographed by paparazzi wearing one of their T-shirts leaving Intelligentsia and they must’ve felt that that was some sort of indirect way of being famous through osmosis. Regardless, they were the rudest people I think I’ve ever encountered, and I’ve lived here my entire life.
I spent much of my time in the stairwell bouncing between my office and the floor below me, where most of my direct reports — and these assholes — worked. While I was down there, I would constantly run into those dudes (I.e., usually always good-looking white men, who thought they were stuck in a permanent episode of Mad Men.) And being the single girl that I was (and maybe just a kind ass individual???) I would always try to smile and say hello to them… only to be completely ignored.
I often used the kitchen on their floor to make tea/get coffee/try to survive in between meetings, and one day a good-looking guy I had never seen before came into the kitchen and started making tea right next to me. As we reached around each other to get our stirrers and sugars, he finally smiled at me. I suppose it could be categorized as some sort of “meet cute,” except when he walked away, I realized he was the new guy in the pretentious department of Don Draper wannabes. (Looking back, he was only half good-looking, like imagine the dumb cousin of Jake Gyllenhaal with a more smooshy jawline. But hey, I was just happy to make contact at that point.)
For the next few weeks, we would run into each other in the kitchen to make our tea — and we’d often even — GASP — hand each other things to help the process. I’d pass him the bowl of sliced lemons, and he would pass me a bag of green tea. We were breaking all the unspoken stranger rules of Los Angeles! Yet somehow, even with that, we never introduced ourselves to each other…. Like it was some unspoken Romeo and Juliet shit, where we couldn’t be seen speaking to each other.
I had been urged by my friends to talk to him, but every time I tried, someone would walk by, or I’d chicken out… then one day, I had the bold idea of adding him on Facebook. (This was 2010 sis, I know we don’t use that shit anymore, but go with me here) I, of course, am an expert internet sleuth and had sought out his name by looking on his office door one day when I was walking by, and found him in the company directory, and of course on google. His name was Evan, and he was from Chicago and didn’t appear right away to be a serial killer. When I typed his name into Facebook, BOOM, there was his smooshy jawline — smiling and making me feel like it might be ok to add him.
I figured, certainly, I could add him and it wouldn’t be an issue because I saw him every other day in the kitchen where we made our flirtatious tea together… So I thought, what the hell, and clicked “ADD FRIEND.”
SIDE BAR: This was also at the time that you under no circumstances added anyone on Facebook unless you knew them IRL, which I felt I indeed DID know him.
The next morning I was excited to see I had a message back from him, but he had NOT accepted my request for some reason. I hurriedly opened the message which said something like: “You look super familiar, did we go to High School Together?”
UM.
I felt deflated. Did I not look like my profile picture or something? Had he not spent hours looking up my name and my department and my hometown?? Rude.
Thinking I was being cute, I simply wrote back, “Nope, I work on the floor above you.” Which now, looking back, if you didn’t know the context and put two and two together and remembered we MAKE TEA TOGETHER EVERY SINGLE FLIPPING DAY, that this could come off quite stalkerish….but I digress. Also, I was assuming he was indeed a smart individual who possessed basic photographic matching to IRL situations skills — what is it they say? Never assume?
For the next week or so, I didn’t see him in the kitchen at all. I thought maybe they’d sent him out of town or somehow I just kept missing him. But I never thought…. Could he be avoiding me?
Finally, a coworker of mine whose office was a few doors down from Evan’s told me he had brushed paths with him. And apparently, Evan had asked him if he knew a girl named Angie in his department. GASP, this bitch DID know my name. But when my friend said he knew me, Evan began to ask him if I was some super weird girl who just added random people on Facebook — because, GASP, he had received a friend request from me and had never met me in his life.
UM. WHAT.
So now, I’m sure you are thinking what I’m thinking, like, WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK/WHAT A DICK. I wanted to go knock on his door and say, “do you not recognize me? We make tea almost every day together, and you are nice and you smile at me and somehow you are too stupid to recognize that THATS my profile? Or do you have a wife or girlfriend and now you’ve realized if you add me, that your cover is blown? Or, are you just a straight up asshole?!”
In the months after this event, if I saw him in the lunch room or in the elevator, he never made eye contact with me ever again, no matter how close we would be standing. I never saw him again in the kitchen making tea. And soon after, I heard he got a new job and left the company completely.
Which like, whoa powerful, if I somehow caused him to freak out enough to leave the company — but I won’t take credit for that! I am truly born and raised in LA — and I was not raised to NOT make eye contact with people and not say hello. I think whatever unspoken rule that is to act like you are better than everyone else comes from the transplants that move here thinking they have to have that mentality in order to be successful here. So if you’ve never been here, please don’t think we’re all just assholes…
I’ll honestly never be sure of what exactly went wrong here — perhaps an early lesson in that “friending” can be “aggressive” somehow? I’ll never understand how even following someone or liking a photo on Instagram can be seen as creepy nowadays if you aren’t careful ( unless you are legit stalking their ex or something).
This leads me to today, whereas I currently have a crush on a person I follow on IG, and I seriously will respond to things he posts and then delete them before I hit “Send” because I remember this violent adverse reaction that Evan had all those years ago. I am not the random DM-er that slides in and is able to trick you into flirting with me because I have PTSD from Facebook Evan.
I’m not aggressive, I’m friendly, bitch. And I’m trying to ask you out, you idiot.
Do you think I should DM him?