I and a woman who lives nearby used to work at the same company. I have seen her around the neighborhood walking and shopping at supermarkets for years. Anne is not really her name (I have no memory of her name) but I will call her that just for conciseness.

I don’t know how many times I have resisted the urge to shout out “DID YOU USED TO WORK AT ____?” but I feel fortunate for having never done so. I do not need or desire to rehash office gossip from over 20 years ago.

Anne was one of the lazy ones. She preached the gospel of pacing yourself, and of not working too hard lest your employers expect too much of you. She also added that busy bodies make their peers look like slobs.

There is something to be said for not letting employers expect too much from you, but I never concurred with the sentiment that working harder than those around you creates a toxic workplace.

Anne had worked at the company for about 15 years when she got fired. She and almost everyone else in the administrative support departments got whacked as part of a misguided corporate redesign which assumed managers and directors would be happy to book their own travel arrangements and type their own memos. That failed endeavor was almost completely reversed after the ouster of the responsible CEO, but people like Anne who’d been fired stayed fired.

The only connection I can remember between myself and Anne (besides working at the same company) was that I bought a microwave oven from her. She posted a hand-written sign on a cafeteria bulletin board, offering an expensive-sounding microwave for about half the list price. It was my first microwave and, aside from cab rides to or from one of the airports, it would be my first real visit to the borough of Queens.

The encounter clogged my head with anxiety. I do not now know if I remember more than I forgot, or if I remember everything that might have mattered.

She and her husband had a tiny studio apartment in a very large building. The microwave she had was almost new, but it had to go because it took up too much space.
Anne talked rudely to her husband, which puzzled me at first because she maintained a huge smile on her face while lobbing comments at him that bordered on cruel. He said little, and seemed to take the abuse with submissive resignation.

Within just several seconds Anne called her husband fat, lazy, stupid, and an asshole. While speaking her face locked in a rictal smile, her lips moving only as much as absolutely necessary to articulate the words. When she stopped saying those words the smile relaxed itself, and she scowled.

Her husband left the apartment momentarily to take garbage out, and she used that window of opportunity to skewer him, telling me what a useless loser she found him to be. Upon his return she seemed to go easier on him by bit addressing him at all. He said nothing. Anne and I made unmemorable chit chat for about 10 minutes as I consumed a glass of lemonade she had offered and which her husband had poured for me. The tiny apartment grew smaller and smaller as I sat on Anne’s couch, which was mostly buried under piles of laundry. It felt as if the ceiling of the room would collapse inside my head, and the bags of laundry would explode inside my chest.

A cab was called, and when it arrived Anne’s husband helped me get the microwave downstairs and into the trunk of the car. Anne stayed in the apartment while we went downstairs. Her husband became visibly more animated and talkative in those 2 or 3 minutes we had alone, though I remember nothing of what he said.

Whatever money I might have saved for buying the microwave second hand was squandered on cab fare.