Everyone at work smokes. So, naturally, I pretend I do to have an excuse to go out back every hour or so for a few minutes to get away from the people demanding sprinkles and coffee (which we don’t have, lady).

Anyways, I go outside and our new head sushi chef, Mr. Han, is out there smoking a cigarette. He used to work only one or two days a week, but our head sushi guy (i’m not kidding) got sick of America and decided to go back to South Korea. Way to weigh your options, pal.

As I walk outside, Mr. Han taps me on the shoulder, points to a jet in the sky and says “Plane.”

“Yea. It sure is,” I reply.

He then pantomimes jumping out of an airplane, points to himself and says, “Me. Uh…South Korean special forces.”

Me: “You jumped out of planes? How many times?”
Mr. Han: “Uh…three…four hundred times?”
Me: “Damn.”
Mr. Han: “In South Korea…20, 21, 22…you in army.”
Me: “How long were you in the army?”
Mr. Han: “Three years…four years…five years.”
Me: “Did you ever kill anyone?”
Mr. Han: “Uh…14…15?”

Holy frickin’ crank. With just this exchange, Mr. Han has already reached a level of badass I will never attain. But there’s more:

Mr. Han: “I not know for sure…”
Me: “Why not?”

He then thinks it over and then (no lie) makes a “throwing a grenade” motion and then shrugs his shoulders to suggest he doesn’t know how many North Koreans he killed because he just wildly threw grenades around on the battlefield.

Mr. Han, thank you for being such an amazing man.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 27th, 2006 at 4:17 and is filed under Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.