Uncle Bob

Yes, I must admit I'm a bit worried since I read Wendy's blog about Uncle Bob trying to track us down for a dinner. I don't think I've mentioned him before as he appeared in a chapter which I thought ended way before I started this blog.

It's been so many years, perhaps 3 years now, but let me give a brief run down. He was my customer back when I was in my old company. He would often call up about once or twice a month just to chat. At first, it started off innocently, an old man wanting to just chat. And he was nice. Slowly, he kept insisting we meet up for dinner with his wife. Eventually, I caved in and brought along my ex-colleague whom he used to call before I took over her job. We went with our respective partners all the way to Klang for seafood which he paid for.

When I first saw him, I got a slight shock as he is bent double, walking with a cane with curved fingers, due to severe arthritis. I felt really sorry for him.

After that, he kept calling and calling. And I did the worst thing possible, I got Wendy involved by making her pick up the calls. He then started to call both of us and finally, when he met Wendy, he said she reminded him of his ex girlfriend from Japan. This intensified his calls to her and he kept insisting on another dinner. He found out our birthdays and sent us two expensive cakes to the office. His wife went to China and he saved us 2 bags as gifts.

So far this looks like this Uncle Bob is just showering us with gifts. But wait! He then starts to ask us for things, other products from our company, as gifts. This part I can't remember exactly but I know he manipulated our sympathy/friendship to get favours.

Somehow, we managed to shrug him off and he stopped calling. Our boss gave us permission to use her name to stop him from calling, it was that bad.

And now he's calling Wendy to ask for a dinner again. Sigh... On one end, he hasn't done anything harmful to us and is probably just wanting to be friendly. On the other hand, I don't care for the manipulation.

Should he ever find out I'm now staying so close to him and that I never invited him to my wedding, he's going to be very upset and say things I don't want to hear.