ew.

So there's this guy, A.K.A. "the Creep" that I met last summer. We met under unusual circumstances at work - he wanted me to help him out on a project he was working on for the county's Asian American Chamber of Commerce. And by "help out," I really mean "schmooze." He thought he was doing a favor by introducing me to the world of climbing the corporate ladder. For those of you who work for large corporations such as myself, you may have heard of Harvey Coleman. In a nutshell, Coleman believes that the way to be successful in life is to abide by the rules of P.I.E. - Performance, Image and Exposure. It did not take me long to figure out that the Creep is a religious follower of the Coleman way of life. He drives a new Mercedes that he can't afford, attends exhaustingly boring meetings and forums of all sorts throughout the DFW metroplex, strips himself of all signs that his culture stems from another country... And all this for sole purpose of adding new contacts to his Blackberry and advancing in the corporate culture of America.

To the Creep, everything is black and white. For every action, you are dealing with imaginary chips. Do a favor for someone, get a chip. Burn a bridge, lose two chips. In the end, you are looking at your pile of chips and evaluating what you have done with your life. And that's fine. It really doesn't matter to me how he sees the world. It seems to make him happy, and that is a good thing. It bothers me, however, when he tries to brainwash me into adopting the same ideology. It shames me to admit that it took me a little while to see how insane it all was. But when you start working somewhere, you inherently want to make a good impression, and I was certainly no exception. So I allowed myself to be dragged to the meaningless meetings that cut into my dinners & must-see-TV. I went to lunch with the Creep to see what new Colemanism he would unleash that day. After a while, his devout behavior even became comedic to me.

That all changed when he started referring to me as the "hottie with the high metabolism," among other uncomfortable expressions. It may not have happened at work, but it was nevertheless highly inappropriate and uncalled for. So you will understand my reasons for trying to cut off contact with him. The last time he asked me to join him for lunch, I had a "conflict," and I hadn't heard back from him since. But yesterday, the Creep somehow thought of me and said to himself, "I haven't talked to H in a long time. I should invite her to lunch and make sure she remains a reliable Blackberry contact." And, for some reason, I have a hard time being mean to people, especially if they can be deemed harmless. So he invited, I accepted, and off to lunch we went. It was as tortuous as expected, but I suppose it could have been worse.

So the question is, is it wrong to maintain a relationship with someone just because it's too hard to cut them off? Or worse, because of the possibility that you may someday benefit from them?