These days there are a lot of Christmas dinners with friends, family, or (the most dreaded) coworkers. The latter often result in impossible engagements, layoffs, fights, and drunken intoxications that would make a Viking blush. Many employees hate Christmas dinner because they believe they should behave in an exemplary manner while their managers drink like crazy, yell, and tell rude jokes. Since you’ll have to go anyway, I’ll tell you: The best defense is a good offense.
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First of all, the company Christmas dinner is a perfect time to switch jobs. For some strange reason, if, after two or three cocktails, you flirt with the boss’s wife, you’ll be fired in less than 24 hours. Many people spend the whole year waiting for such an opportunity for a change.
But maybe you’re of advanced age and this year’s Christmas dinner offers you the chance to go out for your first and last drink of the year. Maybe you want to dance, sing, jump, laugh, and fall in love with a girl twice your age, weight, and income. It’s a great chance to flirt; however, you’ll have to update some concepts with respect to how you did it in the ’90s, when you were flirting by marking your abs through your white T-shirt, leaving anonymous love notes on the blonde girl’s computer, and cutting your jeans at the knees.
The compliment, the good ol’ pick-up line, elegant, subtle, and exciting, no longer works. There are normal girls who will happily receive a compliment, but there is also a percentage of young women who take compliments as a sexist offense. Anyway, you’re in luck: Generally, those who believe that the compliment is sexist sport a very specific aesthetic — the one you would never want to compliment.
On the subject of music, I’ll just tell you the basics: Don’t dance like your grandmother, don’t imitate Freddie Mercury when Bad Bunny comes on, and don’t say that the song Karol G sings is actually a copy of one of Billy Joel’s, even if in the midst of the drunken confusion you’re absolutely sure it is. Don’t ask the DJ for any Whitney Houston songs, let Michael Jackson rest in peace, and don’t try to be hip by requesting Miley Cyrus songs; it’s a Christmas dinner, not a terrorist attack.
Poetry doesn’t really bedazzle the young girls today either, so you shouldn’t really bring out your ability to memorize T.S. Eliot’s verses — unless you recite them rapping, which might impress her; I don’t know if for better or for worse.
Guys now flirt on their cellphones, so don’t think it’s rude if, while you’re telling that porcelain-skinned brunette how you survived the Vietnam War, even though you weren’t born, the woman is looking at her cellphone. It’s not that she’s not interested in the conversation, it’s just that she’s not interested in the conversation. Anyway, to successfully approach her, you should also pull out your cellphone and try to have a conversation looking at your screen while she looks at hers. By post-millennial standards, I think that qualifies as high-voltage romantic dating.
It is also important to take care of your attire. Try not to dress up as the groom at a wedding, but don’t look like you just stole a skater’s clothes either. You should be dressed up enough so that the girl doesn’t notice you’re dressed up enough. I don’t know how it’s done, but that’s the point.
Finally, remember that young girls now no longer want luxury, money, or exorbitant promises about their future careers. They get that on OnlyFans. What they want is to have a good time, to have laugh a lot, and that the next day it doesn’t occur to you to even think about calling them for breakfast together.
If my advice fails and you still don’t manage to pick up the cute intern, you can always try the old spinster in the accounting department. It may not be as entertaining, but while you’re trying to woo her, at least you won’t be talking about how the company is doing, making coarse statements about politics, commenting on the poor quality of the company’s Christmas gifts, and generally any of those things that would make you change jobs in 24 hours without even having to hit on the boss’s wife.
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Translated by Joel Dalmau.
