"There are two types of people in the work place," Stanley said as he struggled with the kitchen knife, trying to make a precise cut into the sticky cake.
Carl the dense one looked uncomfortable and confused.
"Those who brag, and those who don't," Stanley said, licking the cream off his fingers.
"And for those who brag, there are different types of braggards."
Carl frowned, trying to catch up.
"The humble brag, the in-your-face brag, the put-you-down-to-make-himself-look-good brag," explains Stanley, an expert in categorising the human race.
Our sex bunny friend had once lectured us on the different types of gays, the different types of gay bods, right down to the different types of gay appendages.
The topic of the day at Carl's balcony that afternoon is apparently this: Office braggards.
Carl gave up trying to make sense of all of this and finally asked: "What sort of cake is this?"
Stanley glared up at him from slicing the kueh salat midway like Carl was dumb.
Oh, wait...
"It's a peranakan kueh," I chimed in helpfully before any plot could thicken.
Carl the dense one cocked his head sideways the way he always does when he's trying to figure things out.
We left our muscular friend to digest one more fact from this wondrous earth and began distributing the kueh salat slices for our afternoon high tea (since eating out is banned in Singapore, and households can still accommodate two unique visitors a day).
"Nobody can ever eat that," Carl said rubbing his tummy.
"It's nice but, no offence to you Peranakans," Carl said, "but I really don't get this sweet coconut flap over savoury glutinous rice concept."
"No worries, hun," Stanley replied with a pitying smile. "You don't get a lot of things in life," he whispered under his breath.
The afternoon high tea topic of Office Braggards soon returned to the table, upon my timely interruption.
It was indeed timely: The month of July is performance bonus time for some companies.
And it's also the time that divides the staff hires: Those who celebrate their huge payouts for the work they did the previous year, and those who start typing furiously into their laptops to print out resignation letters.
This year, Stanley belonged to the former group -- he always is.
Our sex bunny friend is always motivated by boners and so he performs and delivers all the time.
"What gets me upset is that there are people in my company who got big payouts this year for doing nothing," Stanley said, refilling everyone's cup with freshly brewed Jasmine tea, courtesy of Carl's ever hospitable mum.
Carl, who realised the afternoon discussion didn't involve where to get discounted protein powder, assessing the merits of various workout routines nor ranking types of diets, soon spaced out and began to poke at the scattered grains of rice stuck to his porcelain plate (also courtesy of his mum who insisted her son's visiting friends get served with respectable tableware).
"This is why we need to brag," advocates Stanley.
His argument is this.
There are people in the workplace who dedicate almost all of their waking hours in the office hatching plans to make themselves look good.
Instead of doing actual work, they send out useless emails that tell the whole department that they're very hard at work.
Because nobody calls them out, eventually, some start to believe that Melvin Kong is an actual hard worker, says Stanley, resorting to naming and shaming.
"Who's Melvin Kong?" Carl perked up, thinking that this new guy could be the turning point of this boring subject of office politics.
"He sounds hunky!" Carl said hopefully and started to pound his chest. To a trained child psychologist, Carl's action screams help! I'm bored because I can't relate to this world. Please! I have all these muscles and I don't have much of a brain! I'm trapped! Help!
"You'll need to catch up, Carl," Stanley said.
Our dense friend carried on poking at the grains of rice with a bit more speed.
"I keep telling my team Ollie and Fildza that it's not enough that we do actual work. We need to start boasting too," Stanley said.
According to Stanley, there are two main types of workers in working environment: Those who work and those who don't.
Among those who don't, there are further subdivides: The coasters who just cruise along their daily work and the office braggards who find all ways to show they're hardworking when they're actually not.
"Yes!" Carl said triumphantly. "The plate is clean of rice!"
And this is what gets Stanley so riled up.
These office braggards spend so much effort building up a fake reputation of their capabilities instead of doing actual work.
They do a mere bit in a group project then they'll take the entire team's effort and boast about it on LinkedIn as if they had huge roles in it.
And in that stupid virtual world which is a professional echo chamber, word gets around that Melvin Kong is so damn clever even though some people are clearly aware he's a pure lazy person.
But truly diligent people like Ollie and Fildza, two of my best staff in the department, are so focused on their daily work that they don't boast.
"When you are not loud, you get missed out," said Stanley, who's volume spiked to match his rising anger.
"Stan... please switch to an indoor voice," Carl begged.
"Sure, darling. I specialise in indoor voices," Stanley responded, as Carl's eyes widened, realising the can of worms he'd unwittingly opened.
"I have a variety of indoor voices for you to choose from: The narrow toilet cubicle indoor voice, the echoy chambers of a hotel room indoor voice, or the --"
"Just your normal speaking voice you'd use in a professional meeting," I cut in, sensing that Carl was on the verge of collapse from stress.
You see, Stanley is really upset that his staff didn't get good bonuses this year despite his glowing appraisal for them.
The problem is, he said, the two quiet ones don't get enough visibility in the eyes of the management whereas all year round, the management started to believe that Melvin Kong must be good because he spends so much time posting on social media about his participation in this webinar and having attended that professional course and sharing all those stupid work articles that nobody reads.
Long story short, Stanley said, is that every hard worker must work into his SOP that he needs to boast about his work once in a while because if not, they'll lose out to people like Melvin Kong.
Carl nodded and tried one final time.
"So, who's this Melvin Kong?"
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