Yup, I’m a bitch.

I step over the prone form in front of the door and grab my coat. It’s tattered and lousy but better than nothing.

I can’t say the idea of heading to work filled me with joy, or that the walk there improved my feelings on the subject. New York is filled with inconsiderate assholes who think they own the sidewalk. I grew up in Ohio where there are apple trees and barns and people say hello to each other in the grocery store. I make it sound like a paradise, but when I lived there, it was hell.

Yes, everyone says hello, but everyone is also in everybody else’s business. You have no privacy, no right to a life. At least here in New York no one gives a damn. It’s a blessing and a curse and something that ten million people take for granted every day. It’s why the bums on the street sometimes freeze to death in winter. It’s why there are entire populations of people living in the sewer system. It’s why I’m glad I’m not them.

When I arrive at work, my mood is sour. Once I realize that I’m going to be stuck next to ‘the Dempster’ for the next few hours, my mood resembles something that could curdle a factory of milk with one glare. He’s trying to tell me a story about his conquest on the weekend. I’ve heard this story, he told it three months ago. See the thing is, Paul never actually gets laid. He just likes to make you think he has. Well hell, he is a man, a wimpy, pathetic man who thinks that none of his colleagues has a memory longer than a few weeks. That’s why he recycles his stories and thinks no one has noticed. I debate calling him out.

Instead I work faster, chucking the mail into various boxes with amazing speed. It won’t make me get my work done any quicker because the cycle of work is endless, and I will only end up doing more work today. But it might get me away from Paul sooner.

It’s nearly a relief to be in the shuddering, familiar metal box of the goods elevator. I hit the fourth floor and shuffle along its carpeted walk ways. The smell here is constant, paper and glue, heavy perfume and after shave, until you get into the corner where there is a tantalizing smell of coffee.