The Reward

For most of my life I considered myself an introvert. I'm sure the introvert/extrovert binary was taught to me in some middle school health class where I chose a side and stuck with it. I didn't see myself as an outgoing kid. I definitely had friends to laugh and play with, but because I liked to read and draw and never felt bold enough to play sports or ask a girl to a dance, I assumed that meant I was the quiet kind. It surely had to be one or the other. 

Before the introduction of Hogwarts houses, this divide must have been the first pop psychology personality crisis most kids experienced. A conclusion like this could inform a person's thoughts about themselves forever, as it did for me until a few years ago. 

Before the pandemic, the office building I worked in had a little convenience store in the downstairs lobby. It was the perfect location for a quick coffee or a mid-day snack. Almost every day, a couple of coworkers and I would take the elevator down there just to stretch our legs, chatting and laughing as we browsed the chewing gum and bags of chips. 

The shop was staffed by a rotating cast of women of various ages. My crew and I would regularly engage them in playful banter and ask about their days, or what leftover cafeteria offering was going to be occupying the heated display case that afternoon. Sometimes they'd ask what we were working on, and we'd try to explain in a way that wouldn't bore them, but wouldn't insult them either. It just wasn't particularly interesting work to a normal person, I used to think. 

One rainy afternoon I asked my cubicle neighbors if they wanted to go down to the shop. One of them had her headphones on and shooed me away, deep in a sea of code on her computer screen. Another threw his head back, tapped his pen on his knee as he thought for a second, and yawned "Nahh." Fair enough. I was feeling groggy, too, but I wanted some caffeine for it. 

I made my way down to the shop, where one of the regular cashiers was manning the till. She was a tall young woman with long braids and oversized bracelets. I waved and grabbed a diet soda from the drinks cooler. 

"You can just take it." she said before I could even set it down on the counter. 

"Haha, really?" I didn't think it was up to her. 

"Yeah, I don't care. It's just a soda. Go ahead." She seemed tight-jawed and a little salty. 

I raised a quizzical eyebrow. She never declined to charge me before. "Why..."

"Because you guys treat me like a human being. You and your friends never yell at me for getting your lotto numbers wrong or taking too long to print your receipt, and you don't throw your debit cards or piles of change at me." She threw her hands up to her shoulders and I noticed her eyes were a little misty.

"Oh? People do that, huh?" I tried to convey a tone that was more sympathetic than shocked. I knew retail work was hard, but I apparently hadn't been paying that much attention. 

"Every day. Never you guys, though... Consider it your reward." She remained grim, but the corner of her mouth curled into a little smirk as she pushed the bottled drink at me. 

I took the soda back upstairs to my desk and stared at it for a little bit before I decanted it into a paper cup. I was suddenly feeling very guilty. Not because it had technically been "stolen," but because a person I saw almost every day was miserable. I earned this small token of appreciation for doing the absolute bare minimum of not making it worse. I didn't do it to be nice, or to get something in return. I just did my normal thing and it happened. 

For the next few days' worth of visits, I tried to casually observe. Sure enough, people were shitty. A few instances could be attributed to stressed out commuters on tight schedules, or awkward personalities, but probably 70% of customers didn't meet the checkout girl's gaze, or say a single word to her, or offer a hand when something got dropped or spilled. Their relationship to her was the truest form of transactional- I put down money, you do everything else. What a waste of human connection. 

From then on I overemphasized all of my interactions with everyone staffing the shop. I over enunciated my 'pleases' and 'thank yous', I made a point of sharing a joke or an observation. I was trying, perhaps not very subtly, to model good behavior for my fellow customers. 

One of the older, world-wearier cashiers noticed pretty quickly that my chipper demeanor seemed forced. 

"What is up with you lately?" She challenged me one afternoon as I paid for a Ginger Ale.

I glanced around to make sure I wouldn't be heard. "Well, I feel like people kind of treat you guys crappy, and I thought-"

"Haha" she dropped her shoulders and chuckled. "We don't care. We don't take it personally. I appreciate you guys upstairs. You're fun, but y'all are just extroverts."

While I didn't believe this to be true about myself, I had just been confronted with the wisdom of someone who interacted with hundreds of people a day, often enough to size them up pretty accurately. 

"Huh. Okay." I was a little disappointed not only to have a hole poked in my little social scheme, but now I also had to wrestle with my entire conception of myself. No big deal. 

I decided to start acting like myself again, and things continued pretty quietly at the shop for the next few years without incident. Every once in a while my team and I would have a drink or a snack pushed towards us with a wink and an understanding that it was just for being cool. 

Unfortunately the shop closed when the entire lobby was torn up and renovated to increase security and improve traffic flow into the elevators. The space it once occupied was turned into a waiting area for visitors to the building, and a wall was torn down to turn a former storage space into a self-serve cafe.

The cashiers I used to see every day have been replaced by the cafe's touch screens. You just grab your desired item from a cooler or the counter, scan the barcode, and tap your phone to pay. You don't even have to look anyone in the eye, let alone talk to them. I've been told this is an introvert's dream. Makes me think I am an extrovert after all.