What a hit!

The “tock-tock-tock” boy’s right shoulder was slightly forward and he was running so fast that he was barely touching the ground with his small feet. With his left arm, he was pressing a misshaped stack of papers against his chest. The papers were falling out of the stack piece by piece leaving a white trail on the floor. At the same time, the boy was yelling: “Sorry, I’m very sorry, Miss Klim! They’ve just told me about you. I’m sorry I missed you when you stopped by!” He waved cheerfully from the distance without waiting for Linda’s introduction. As he approached, he continued talking without a pause. “Phew, I’ve just come back from an off-site meeting on global sustainability. A great meeting, by the way! If AFM could get more involved in sustainability projects that would be fantastic . . . I mean, sorry, I should have said first - what a delight to meet you, Miss Klim! Linda, nice to see you too! You look great today! Thank you for bringing Miss Klim, Linda! Thank you for being here, Miss Klim!’ The boy vigorously shook my hand with both his hands and dropped the rest of the papers at my feet.

“Oh, I’m sorry again! Clumsy me!” The boy bent down to pick up the papers, but forgot to let go my hand. I got pulled down and smashed my forehead against the boy’s. It was quite a hit.

“Ouch!” I exclaimed and covered the sore spot with my hand. “Oh, my God!” Linda screamed, “Are you all right, Miss Klim?” I was about to say that it was quite painful and now I could hear a loud ringing in my head, but I looked at the boy and stopped short. He was so terrified that he stood motionless, with his mouth open, pale in the face, and breathing heavily.

I just had to say: “I’m okay. Nothing to worry about, really!” I even tried to smile as I was afraid that the boy would start crying.

Then Linda and I had to listen to the boy’s long stream of apologies filled with a dozen “sorrys” and two dozen “please forgive me.” It took me another five minutes to convince the boy that “everything is just fine,” that I was happy to meet him and that I would be equally happy to work with him. Finally, the boy felt better. “I look forward to making our wonderful company even better, Miss Klim! And I am very sorry about the incident! I promise that will never happen again!” the boy yelled as he darted away still looking back and waving at me. In a few seconds, the boy bumped into another employee, apologized to him, dropped his papers again, picked them up, and eventually disappeared in one of the cubicles.