The Boys at Work

There’s this guy I ride the elevator with about once a week. He always looks (and sounds) like he just rolled out of bed. And onto the set of an Abercrombie and Fitch photo shoot.

We never really spoke to each other until last week when he ran into me in the lobby as I was picking up the Wall Street Journal for day. When he saw me, he swung around dramatically and said, “This is crazy! I see you every day!”

So now I know he’s a lawyer and he works three floors above me and he told me his name but I forgot, both because I’m horrible with names and because my foot was really hurting and I was focusing extremely hard on walking into the elevator without limping. (Our friendship being so new, I wasn’t ready to have that conversation with him.)

I saw him again yesterday, where else but getting into the elevator. “I see you every single day!” he said, although that’s an exaggeration because really it’s more like once every five to seven days. But I gave him some slack because it was Monday morning and he was hungover and I respect that in a person.

At least he gives me some innocuous entertainment.

On the other end of the spectrum is the guy who runs the mailroom. He was always friendly but one time I had to ask him about a package and he became friendlier. And then even friendlier.

“You’re looking good today,” he said two weeks ago, looking me up and down as I stood there looking like a goddamn stool pigeon in my ridiculous business casual getup.

I hesitate to even say such things in public as I know the Pandora’s Box it can open, but it’s times like those when I really wish I could truthfully say something about a boyfriend. I guess I could untruthfully say something but I’m horrible at lying and so instead I did what I usually do in situations like that, which was to coolly thank him and then try to avoid him.

But I still have to get the fucking mail every day, and now every time he sees me, he greets me, “Hey, beautiful!” in a voice that is really not appropriate for the mailroom in the lobby of a large office building.

If Abercrombie and Fitch Boy greeted me with “Hey, beautiful!” I’d probably laugh and secretly be flattered.  These guys are like a microcosmic glimpse into the complexities of the rest of my life, boiled down into two polar opposite categories.  I feel like I'm spending an inordinate amount of time trying to dissuade one type of behavior, trying to encourage another, and getting absolutely nowhere with either. 

It makes me tired.