I am waiting for the day that I am free of YEE

I have a co-worker.

A few weeks ago he stopped me in the mailroom. He said:

"Beth, say YEE"

"What?"

"Say YEE"

"Yee?"

"YEE."

And then we paused for a few moments and looked at each other.

"Ok are you going to tell me what that was about?"

"Oh well in California that's what people say when they're excited."

"Oh are you excited?"

"No I am just bored."

"Oh ok. So when were you in California?"

"Oh I've never been to California. I just read about it on Wikipedia."

OK. FINE. Weird interaction over. FINE.

But now every morning when I come in he says to me:

"YEE!"

And whenever I see him in the mailroom he says to me:

"YEE!"

Like it's some sort of secret code that we share.

And while I have made it my highest intention to do so, it is impossible to avoid him.

The thing that bothers me about this situation I am in is that he treats YEE as an inside joke we cooked up with together, and it is NOT. It came from his brain exclusively and he forced it upon me, based, I think, upon the knowledge that I, Beth, had once set foot in the state of California. YEE.

I am glad to say that a campaign of non-response over the past few weeks has yielded some results. But while the number of YEE instances per day is diminishing, YEE has not yet been eliminated.

I am working, delicately, on various tactics to fully smother YEE; none of these involve increasing my tolerance for the use of the word. I am just not open to that possibility. I hope to conquer YEE by the fall. I think it's the best I can hope for.