#138. Jean-Pierre (Friday, December 11, 2015)
What was your best day of…befriending someone right when they were about to leave your life forever?
In 2015, my second year at my institution, four of the junior economists on my floor left for private sector jobs in Toronto. With me still being my socially disengaged self at that point (#27), pretty much all of my outside-of-work socializing that year happened at goodbye parties.
Jean-Pierre’s (#16) departure was the last one of the year. He was one of the brightest economists we had. He’d won an Award of Excellence (#16)—jointly with another economist who’d already left—for a project he had done in the credit ratings group. And he was the epitome of work-hard, play-hard, and he wore a suit literally every day… except today, his last day, when he was in a shorts and a T-shirt.
Some important context: at the after-party following our department Christmas party the week before1, Jean-Pierre had abruptly called me out for giving Mathieu Remillard (#58) an overly hard handshake. What started as a joke turned into him seriously telling me that this kind of thing was socially unacceptable, with several colleagues getting me to “try again” my handshake on them. Embarrassed more than angry, I made an excuse to leave and assumed we’d never discuss it again.
So at Jean-Pierre’s goodbye party today—which is at the always-busy John A. Macdonald pub where we have a giant main table in the middle booked for a group of over thirty—Jean-Pierre and I have our one-on-one chat early in the evening. He starts by kind-of-apologizing for what he did the week before, telling me he didn’t like saying these things behind people’s backs and that I was a really smart guy, but wouldn’t get anywhere if I didn’t know how to interact with people.
I take it for what it is, and that’s that. We then talk about relationships. I tell him about things ending with Chenling in May (#91). He tells me he’s really sorry, which I thought was more sympathy than the situation warranted. He then tells me about things not working out with his girlfriend. From there, we get into more personal stuff, where of course I lie to him and tell him my parents are in Toronto—because, a year and a half in, I’m still way too insecure about being back in my small hometown and not interested in judgment-laden conversations with coworkers about why I’m living with my parents. He tells me we should go get drinks next time I’m home in Toronto.
The party itself is pretty awesome. The fish and chips are pristine. And by this point, I’m at least acquaintances with most of the people there, and so I do my usual thing where I go from group to group (#67, #60), talking more deeply about people’s lives and work, until I lose track of time. There is one notable moment, though, when I’m talking to someone and accidentally say something implying my parents live in Ottawa. As I struggle to explain, Jean-Pierre, standing nearby, casually says, “Because his parents live here,” before going back to his conversation.
What sticks with me is that, through the remaining two hours at the John A and several more after midnight at another bar, he never brings up the fact that I lied to his face. Rather, he seems genuinely happy to be interacting with me. And when the time comes to say our goodbyes forever (I only see him one more time after this, at Aaron’s wedding, #16), it genuinely feels heartfelt. Even though I never really knew him that well when we were working together.