I have a simple love/hate relationship with most of my student employees. I love them them, and deep down they despise me.  Ok, despise is probably too harsh of a word, but let’s just say sometimes they look at me like I’m the mom that drives them and their friends to the mall while singing along to Britney Spears.  (Oh yeah, I’m gonna be that mom, but that’s beside the point.)  While I don’t have favorites, I do have a certain handful of students who we share an equal amount of tolerance for each other.

One of these students in particular might be a long-lost cousin of mine and our similar musical and entertainment choices can be a bit frightening at times.  But more than anything I enjoy giving her a hard time and watching her dramatic reactions to being fake fired or making fun of her whatever shenanigan we can dream up at 5:10 on a Thursday afternoon.  Well recently she mentioned that she needed to get off work early for a volunteer project she was heading up.  Knowing that she’d have to get the approval of her supervisor, I sent her to him to ask for this favor.  Before she had the chance to plead her case and without her knowing, I asked him to deny her request and play along with me.

Confidently, she pleaded her case and seemed stunned when he told her ‘no’.  (Guess I shouldn’t have told her it would be no big deal.)  I came back into the room as she was leaving with her head down completely floored that her boss was being so unresonable.  I put my arm around her and told her I’d plead her case for her.  Again I enlisted the support of her supervisor and our boss, as I called her back into the full-time staff office and told her with a lil work I’d been able to broker a deal that would allow her to get the time off she needed.  All she had to do was dance for at least 60 seconds to Michael Jackson’s Thriller.

Now the guys had no clue that she had learned the whole dance last semester and didn’t think she’d go along with my plan.  But after convincing her it was the only way she could get the time off, we opened up the youtube video of Thriller and watched as she worked through her shame and embarrassment to give us a brilliant performance that riveled Jennifer Garner’s in 13 Going On 30.  By the end of her minute of glory, I couldn’t stop laughing and she quickly realized she had been played.  Being the great sport she is she laughed it off and headed back to finish her shift.  Now I just gotta keep my eyes open to her retaliation.