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Today, while cleaning out my email, I was confronted with the evidence of what was probably the creepiest dating situation I ever encountered, which is saying a lot, because I met a boatload of creepers. But this, well, this story takes the cake.
It happened back in 2007, just before Hubby and I started dating. I was working in a corporate environment, but it was pretty lax in terms of atmosphere. I was in a newly formed department, and most of the other people were, like me, transfers from other departments. We only had a few outside hires, and it was often difficult for them to come into a department full of people who had know each other for a long time. We had one girl we hired, I will call her Z, who had a harder time fitting in. I tried to take her under my wing, since she and another new hire were not even able to sit with the rest of the department for the first few month. We talked a lot over IM, and I helped her learn the ropes. I guess she was pretty grateful, because before long, she told me she wanted to fix me up with her friend, Rich.
Rich sent Z and email, and she forwarded it to me. It was all about how Z had told him about how awesome I was and he wanted to get to know me. Since I was doing lots of online dating, this didn't seem too odd to me (yet),so I emailed back. We exchanged a few emails, and I noticed that he wrote in a way that, well, it sounded like how a woman would talk, not how a man would talk. One email included an emoticon rose. Cheesy, but, still, no real warning signals. Every day Z would want to talk about Rich, and how things were going. So, Z and I started spending more time together at work, since she was serving as a go between. I started to feel a little weird about it.
Rich sent me pictures, and asked for my number so he could call or text me. I provided the number, and.... nothing. No calls, no texts. Nothing. So I asked for his number, which he provided, but it dumped into a generic "you have reached 123-456-7890" recording. Hmmm, suspicious. So, like any overly cautious single woman, I decided to google "Rich". He had a ridiculous last name, and when you google his name, there are no results on the entire internet. None. In fact, his last name alone appears no where. Not one entry. On the whole internet.
Ok, so according to the internet, this guy pretty much does not exist. No one with his last name has any address anywhere in the world. So, at this point, I am pretty sure this is bogus, but not sure of the details.
I asked Z why "Rich" never called me and she says he accidentally ran over his phone and destroyed it (which had just happened to someone we worked with, how convenient). But she insists I will hear from him, and sure enough, the next day, I got flowers delivered at work from "Rich". Z was all up in my business, asking how I liked them and stuff. It was getting pretty creepy. And no actual voice contact with "Rich". He mentioned where he worked, and to make sure I was not totally nuts, I called the general number for that place, and no surprise, no "Rich" was employed there. Clearly, this dude did not exist.
The final straw came when Z was IMing me one day, and I noticed she consistently misspelled the same words that "Rich" did. And these were not common misspellings. One was misspelling "freak" as "friek" (oh the irony). Finally, I pulled Z aside, and confronted her with my suspicions that "Rich" did not really exist. She had no explanation and just kept saying how I was so nice, she wanted me to find someone nice to be with.
Um, what? What would have happened had I agreed to go out with "Rich". Would she have showed up instead? How did this ever seem like a good idea?
Needless to say, working with her after this was awkward.
And today, I found all the emails. I was laughing so hard reading them, my favorite quote from "Rich" is this"
"I hate to say it, but more often than not, I'd like to stay in, sipping on one of my exquisite wine of the month bottles, and watch one of my favorite movies. There's nothing more comforting after a day of pounding the pavement, attempting to pay the bills than to come home and wrap yourself up in a world where let's face it 95% the guy gets the girl and everyone lives happily ever after."
How did I not know immediately that this was FAKE?
So, do YOU have any dating horror stories?
