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From the archives
Almost Getting Slapped
I volunteered at the archives on Thursdays. There were ten volunteers a week. Two a day. They were always sending us out to pick something up, so two volunteers meant one person could head off on an afternoon of errands and there would still be someone waiting around on the off chance anything urgent ever came up.
The other Thursday volunteer was Mable [not her real name]. She was 29, Australian, and working two unpaid internships on top of bartending for rent. She was loud, tired, and always wore a fake fur coat. We probably only spent about ten Thursdays together, but during that fall I think she lost her credit card one hundred times. I could tell that the younger people in the office, a small handful in their early thirties, thought she was cool. I thought that she was terrifying. She thought that I was a child. (I was twenty.)
The building where we were had originally been a courthouse. Interns worked in the old jail cell while most of the staff worked in a large, shared office right around the corner. Though we were mostly out of sight and out of mind, it was important to our boss, Peter [not his real name], that we look busy. If he heard us talking or saw us on our phones, he’d dress us down. But, other than the occasional errand, we weren’t given very much to do. Usually, we’d get through our assignments in about half an hour and then spend the rest of the day pretending to work on a laptop.
When we would talk, we had to whisper to avoid getting in trouble. Mabel would ask me questions like, “So do you even go out and stuff?” and then look at me with a bored, blank face while I tried to describe some college basement party. Or she would give me a complex logic puzzle she could only half remember and then refuse to tell me the answer when I couldn’t come up with the solution. Sometimes, it was clear that she was trying to make me uncomfortable. Other times, I wasn’t sure. She had a great talent for making even the most mundane of our conversations feel like a prank she was pulling on me. And sometimes, when you are really talented at something, it becomes so second nature you don’t even have to try.
The main thing I remember about Mabel is that she would walk up, almost slap me, and then go, “You flinched!” On average, it probably happened twice a day. It felt bad every time. I assume that that was part of the intention. It’s hard to imagine someone doing that to a borderline stranger and thinking, “this will make us friends.”
I fucking hated Mabel. It wasn’t just that she was pranking me and talking to me with disdain, though that certainly made it easier. It was also the fact that working with Mabel meant that I didn’t get to work with another shy, college aged movie dork. I just wanted to make a friend at a different school who shared some of my interests. Maybe meet some of their friends. Open up my world a little bit. No luck. I thought that college and internships were a chance to “find my people.” But here I was in a former jail cell trying not to get yelled at and the only person I could share that experience with was playing Dennis the Menace pranks on me.
As a 29 year old now, I wonder if I could be friends with the Mabel I knew then. I certainly have a lot more respect for what it would take to move to a new country and work unpaid jobs with college students to start a new career. And, over time, I have developed a much better sense of whether someone is trying to be rude to me or if they are just high. I would like to think that we could be friends, but, if I’m being honest with myself, I have only gotten more and more scared of people I find truly unpredictable.
One day, Peter came in and asked to speak with Mable. When she came back, she was muttering under her breath. “God, I can’t believe I got fired from an unpaid internship. Working for fucking free with fucking students. This is so embarrassing.”
I still feel guilty saying this, but I wasn’t surprised. She was almost always late and had little patience for Peter asking us to look busy while giving us nothing to do. I felt bad for her, but I also didn’t know how to respond. She wasn’t talking to me and we weren’t close, so I just leaned in closer to whatever I was reading on my laptop.
While she was packing up her stuff, the mumbling evolved. She said it was bullshit that she had done so much work for free; that it was so frustrating to spend so many hours volunteering at this place that didn’t give a shit about her. And then, she started talking about how they should give her something for her time here. A shirt? Some books? Her work laptop! Her mumbling really fixed in on the laptop. How she should take the laptop. How no one would know until she was gone. How, even if she sold it, it would still be less than minimum wage for all the Thursdays she had given them.
Then, Peter came in and sent me on an errand. I needed to drop off a DVD at someone’s apartment and then pick up a handful of hard drives loaded with horror movies.
When I got back, a little after five, Mable’s computer was gone.
As soon as I saw that the laptop was missing, I started worrying that I was going to get in trouble. Partially because I heard Mabel mumbling about stealing the laptop earlier and didn’t say anything; but mostly because I was not used to being treated well at this job.
I always got the impression that Peter genuinely disliked me. This came as a real blow because, other than his distaste for me, he seemed like a pretty cool guy. He was a handsome introvert who had proven himself as a pillar in his niche corner of the art world. Around the office, he was open hearted and supportive. I remember him holding hands with a crying coworker after the 2016 election, reassuring her that she was part of a community that would work to support and protect her. He stayed with her for forty-five minutes, listening to her worries and grabbing her tissues. But this generosity of spirit seemed to be reserved for the paid staff. Maybe it was one of the benefits of the job, like health insurance.
I started noticing this hostile energy pretty early. My first week interning, he asked me to sell a bunch of old Playboys. The archive’s longstanding librarian had recently retired and left behind about forty magazines from the 1980s and 1990s. I put together a list of stores that bought used magazines and called them to get an idea of who would pay the most. The best offer was about $3. As multiple kind people explained to me that day, if you have one of the early Playboys from the 1950s, the world is your oyster. But, once those early magazines started reselling for big figures, men all around the world started stashing their old copies away like Beanie Babies in hopes that they might contribute to their retirement fund in thirty years. And, by the time I’m making these calls, the internet exists. It’s never been easier to see pictures of naked people. So not only is the supply high, but the demand is at an all time low. Most places wouldn’t take them for free. I repeated this little economic lesson to Peter and he growled, “Just leave the magazines by the door. I’ll see if someone can actually handle this next week.”
As it became clearer and clearer to me that I was not making a good impression on someone I was still hoping could become a professional reference someday, I tried to see what I could do to break the ice. I started by looking for things that needed to be done before I was asked to do them. The problem, though, was that when I’d ask Peter how something in the archive worked, he’d respond “I’m not sure that concerns you.” The more that I tried to learn about how the place ran, the more that Peter started treating me like some sort of spy sent to steal his avant-garde cinema secrets. Eventually, I learned my lesson and gave up. After that, I tried to be more intentional about making small talk with him. I was worried that my shyness was coming off as coldness. But, when I’d try to start a conversation, he’d say that he was busy and walk away. Despite my best efforts, the only time I remember him saying anything nice to me was when I said that I had never seen The Blair Witch Project and he went, “Good boy.”
All of this is just to say that while I may not have been at my most rational, it didn’t seem impossible that I was about to receive partial blame for this laptop crime.
But by this point, Peter was gone. Almost everyone was gone. The only other person left was Ana [not her real name], the marketing and social media guy. As I crept into the shared office, I heard Ana on the verge of tears talking on the phone about the finer details of her student loans. I had about twenty minutes before leaving for the day, so I figured I could wait out this phone call. I was wrong.
After twenty minutes, I slunk into the shared office, made eye contact with Ana, and tried to stand in a way that said, “I am waiting for a chance to talk to you.” She paused her conversation and looked at me, expectantly. I explained that the laptop was missing and she replied, “Peter and Jason [not his real name] already know. It’s under control.” Then she wished me a nice night and returned her attention to the dark hells of student loans.
The next Thursday, I was sick. I did not volunteer.
The Thursday after that, though, I arrived at work to see Mabel typing away on the laptop.
I still don’t know what happened.
I couldn’t ask Peter. I could already hear him responding, “I’m not sure if that concerns you.”
And I couldn’t ask Mabel. Because what if this whole thing had been a prank? What if they had asked her to run some errand with the laptop and she had the idea to pretend that she was being fired and stealing on her way out? In some ways, it seems unlikely. None of her other pranks were this elaborate. Usually, the pranks were just some version of me almost getting slapped. But the alternative is that she did get fired, did steal a laptop, and then did get her job back.
For a long time, this is where the story ended. But in the almost ten years since this happened, I’ve kept growing as a person. And if you never stop growing, then it’s almost like no story is ever over.
Probably the biggest catalyst for change in my life was meeting my partner. They are a tall, exciting extrovert who lives life in ways I can barely understand. When they are struggling with something, they ask for help. When they miss someone they haven’t seen in a long time, they text them. While I see social interactions as obstacle courses I am trying to maneuver through, they see them as opportunities to get to know people better and build connections. As an autistic introvert, going out with them is like watching a magic show. I’m sure that there is a logical explanation for everything that is happening, but that only makes it all the more impressive.
They will go up to strangers on the street to compliment their outfits. The odds of me doing that are about the same as of me trying to slip Skittles in their pocket while they aren’t looking. It’s not that I think that what my partner is doing is wrong. It’s just something I would never think to do with a stranger. Close friends only, please!
But in watching my partner for almost four years now, it is hard to argue with the facts. Most people seem pretty pleased to get a compliment. A lot of the people you miss miss you, too. And most strangers are nicer than not, especially if you are in a library.
Left to my own devices, I mirror the social involvement of people around me. If someone talks to me, I talk back. If someone invites me to something, I now have permission to invite them to something later. But the downside is, until someone else starts to engage with you, you have very little say over what is going on. Someone else has to welcome you in. And until then, you are out in the cold.
A side effect of this is that I spend a lot of time listening to other people have conversations. To be clear, I’m not talking about eavesdropping. I’m not trying to spy on people. In most cases, I’ve asked the people that I am listening to if I can sit with them. It’s just that I have found with many people, if you are a little shy and kind of awkward, it’s easier for them to just ignore you. And before you know it, you’re learning about all of your coworker’s problems with her daughter’s boyfriend in Arizona. I am a patient, good listener who grew up with a dad who could monologue for an hour without stopping. I have all the skills and experience needed to excel at the job. The danger is that I can get so used to the feeling of fading into the background that I forget that I am still, in a very real way, part of the conversation.
For example, about a month ago, I was in a meeting with four other people. Two were in the room with me and two were on Zoom. After the meeting, the people in the room with me kept talking. I missed the very beginning of the conversation, but it was pretty clear that someone we used to work with had done something they both felt betrayed by. Now, I don’t know who they were talking about. But, whoever it is, it is someone I know. We’ve mostly worked here for the same period of time. So I started running the data. I narrowed it down to two likely candidates and three possible candidates. But before I could assemble my mental “Guess Who” board, they started getting up to leave.
That night, I told my partner about my new mystery. I laid out the cases against the likely candidates and wondered what information I needed to get a clearer answer. As I was telling my partner about this, I realized that they were looking at me with a confused expression. When I asked why, they responded, “You know that you could have just asked them, right?”
I did not know that.
Honestly, it hadn’t occurred to me.
So I responded, “Well, I think by that point they had started having a conversation without me.”
“Did they know that? Weren’t you all sitting at the same small table together?”
They made a fair point, but I wasn’t ready to concede. The point seemed technically true, but not necessarily…actually true.
So I said, “I hear you, but it really felt like they were talking to each other. None of that conversation energy was heading my way.”
They responded, “Look, I am not trying to disagree with you about conversation energy. But even if you weren’t in the conversation at that moment, that doesn’t mean that you couldn’t have said anything. You have a relationship with these people. You know that you can ask them questions, right?”
Again, I did not know.
It hadn’t crossed my mind.
But as I stood in the kitchen, thinking over the radical proposal that my partner was laying out–specifically that I could ask my coworkers about work drama that doesn’t directly impact either of us–I had a realization about the whole situation with Mabel: I should have asked Ana what happened! She probably knew. And if I said that I couldn’t ask Mabel because of the whole her-almost-slapping-me-all-the-time thing, I’m sure she would have understood. I don’t have to live with the ambiguity! Ana knows the answer!
Now, did I look at the archives website to see if Ana still works there? Sure. Does she? No. Do I remember her last name to try and find a way to contact her? Again, no. So, in that way, I do have to live with the ambiguity. But if the exact same thing happens to me again, I’ll know what to do.
The other Thursday volunteer was Mable [not her real name]. She was 29, Australian, and working two unpaid internships on top of bartending for rent. She was loud, tired, and always wore a fake fur coat. We probably only spent about ten Thursdays together, but during that fall I think she lost her credit card one hundred times. I could tell that the younger people in the office, a small handful in their early thirties, thought she was cool. I thought that she was terrifying. She thought that I was a child. (I was twenty.)
The building where we were had originally been a courthouse. Interns worked in the old jail cell while most of the staff worked in a large, shared office right around the corner. Though we were mostly out of sight and out of mind, it was important to our boss, Peter [not his real name], that we look busy. If he heard us talking or saw us on our phones, he’d dress us down. But, other than the occasional errand, we weren’t given very much to do. Usually, we’d get through our assignments in about half an hour and then spend the rest of the day pretending to work on a laptop.
When we would talk, we had to whisper to avoid getting in trouble. Mabel would ask me questions like, “So do you even go out and stuff?” and then look at me with a bored, blank face while I tried to describe some college basement party. Or she would give me a complex logic puzzle she could only half remember and then refuse to tell me the answer when I couldn’t come up with the solution. Sometimes, it was clear that she was trying to make me uncomfortable. Other times, I wasn’t sure. She had a great talent for making even the most mundane of our conversations feel like a prank she was pulling on me. And sometimes, when you are really talented at something, it becomes so second nature you don’t even have to try.
The main thing I remember about Mabel is that she would walk up, almost slap me, and then go, “You flinched!” On average, it probably happened twice a day. It felt bad every time. I assume that that was part of the intention. It’s hard to imagine someone doing that to a borderline stranger and thinking, “this will make us friends.”
I fucking hated Mabel. It wasn’t just that she was pranking me and talking to me with disdain, though that certainly made it easier. It was also the fact that working with Mabel meant that I didn’t get to work with another shy, college aged movie dork. I just wanted to make a friend at a different school who shared some of my interests. Maybe meet some of their friends. Open up my world a little bit. No luck. I thought that college and internships were a chance to “find my people.” But here I was in a former jail cell trying not to get yelled at and the only person I could share that experience with was playing Dennis the Menace pranks on me.
As a 29 year old now, I wonder if I could be friends with the Mabel I knew then. I certainly have a lot more respect for what it would take to move to a new country and work unpaid jobs with college students to start a new career. And, over time, I have developed a much better sense of whether someone is trying to be rude to me or if they are just high. I would like to think that we could be friends, but, if I’m being honest with myself, I have only gotten more and more scared of people I find truly unpredictable.
One day, Peter came in and asked to speak with Mable. When she came back, she was muttering under her breath. “God, I can’t believe I got fired from an unpaid internship. Working for fucking free with fucking students. This is so embarrassing.”
I still feel guilty saying this, but I wasn’t surprised. She was almost always late and had little patience for Peter asking us to look busy while giving us nothing to do. I felt bad for her, but I also didn’t know how to respond. She wasn’t talking to me and we weren’t close, so I just leaned in closer to whatever I was reading on my laptop.
While she was packing up her stuff, the mumbling evolved. She said it was bullshit that she had done so much work for free; that it was so frustrating to spend so many hours volunteering at this place that didn’t give a shit about her. And then, she started talking about how they should give her something for her time here. A shirt? Some books? Her work laptop! Her mumbling really fixed in on the laptop. How she should take the laptop. How no one would know until she was gone. How, even if she sold it, it would still be less than minimum wage for all the Thursdays she had given them.
Then, Peter came in and sent me on an errand. I needed to drop off a DVD at someone’s apartment and then pick up a handful of hard drives loaded with horror movies.
When I got back, a little after five, Mable’s computer was gone.
As soon as I saw that the laptop was missing, I started worrying that I was going to get in trouble. Partially because I heard Mabel mumbling about stealing the laptop earlier and didn’t say anything; but mostly because I was not used to being treated well at this job.
I always got the impression that Peter genuinely disliked me. This came as a real blow because, other than his distaste for me, he seemed like a pretty cool guy. He was a handsome introvert who had proven himself as a pillar in his niche corner of the art world. Around the office, he was open hearted and supportive. I remember him holding hands with a crying coworker after the 2016 election, reassuring her that she was part of a community that would work to support and protect her. He stayed with her for forty-five minutes, listening to her worries and grabbing her tissues. But this generosity of spirit seemed to be reserved for the paid staff. Maybe it was one of the benefits of the job, like health insurance.
I started noticing this hostile energy pretty early. My first week interning, he asked me to sell a bunch of old Playboys. The archive’s longstanding librarian had recently retired and left behind about forty magazines from the 1980s and 1990s. I put together a list of stores that bought used magazines and called them to get an idea of who would pay the most. The best offer was about $3. As multiple kind people explained to me that day, if you have one of the early Playboys from the 1950s, the world is your oyster. But, once those early magazines started reselling for big figures, men all around the world started stashing their old copies away like Beanie Babies in hopes that they might contribute to their retirement fund in thirty years. And, by the time I’m making these calls, the internet exists. It’s never been easier to see pictures of naked people. So not only is the supply high, but the demand is at an all time low. Most places wouldn’t take them for free. I repeated this little economic lesson to Peter and he growled, “Just leave the magazines by the door. I’ll see if someone can actually handle this next week.”
As it became clearer and clearer to me that I was not making a good impression on someone I was still hoping could become a professional reference someday, I tried to see what I could do to break the ice. I started by looking for things that needed to be done before I was asked to do them. The problem, though, was that when I’d ask Peter how something in the archive worked, he’d respond “I’m not sure that concerns you.” The more that I tried to learn about how the place ran, the more that Peter started treating me like some sort of spy sent to steal his avant-garde cinema secrets. Eventually, I learned my lesson and gave up. After that, I tried to be more intentional about making small talk with him. I was worried that my shyness was coming off as coldness. But, when I’d try to start a conversation, he’d say that he was busy and walk away. Despite my best efforts, the only time I remember him saying anything nice to me was when I said that I had never seen The Blair Witch Project and he went, “Good boy.”
All of this is just to say that while I may not have been at my most rational, it didn’t seem impossible that I was about to receive partial blame for this laptop crime.
But by this point, Peter was gone. Almost everyone was gone. The only other person left was Ana [not her real name], the marketing and social media guy. As I crept into the shared office, I heard Ana on the verge of tears talking on the phone about the finer details of her student loans. I had about twenty minutes before leaving for the day, so I figured I could wait out this phone call. I was wrong.
After twenty minutes, I slunk into the shared office, made eye contact with Ana, and tried to stand in a way that said, “I am waiting for a chance to talk to you.” She paused her conversation and looked at me, expectantly. I explained that the laptop was missing and she replied, “Peter and Jason [not his real name] already know. It’s under control.” Then she wished me a nice night and returned her attention to the dark hells of student loans.
The next Thursday, I was sick. I did not volunteer.
The Thursday after that, though, I arrived at work to see Mabel typing away on the laptop.
I still don’t know what happened.
I couldn’t ask Peter. I could already hear him responding, “I’m not sure if that concerns you.”
And I couldn’t ask Mabel. Because what if this whole thing had been a prank? What if they had asked her to run some errand with the laptop and she had the idea to pretend that she was being fired and stealing on her way out? In some ways, it seems unlikely. None of her other pranks were this elaborate. Usually, the pranks were just some version of me almost getting slapped. But the alternative is that she did get fired, did steal a laptop, and then did get her job back.
For a long time, this is where the story ended. But in the almost ten years since this happened, I’ve kept growing as a person. And if you never stop growing, then it’s almost like no story is ever over.
Probably the biggest catalyst for change in my life was meeting my partner. They are a tall, exciting extrovert who lives life in ways I can barely understand. When they are struggling with something, they ask for help. When they miss someone they haven’t seen in a long time, they text them. While I see social interactions as obstacle courses I am trying to maneuver through, they see them as opportunities to get to know people better and build connections. As an autistic introvert, going out with them is like watching a magic show. I’m sure that there is a logical explanation for everything that is happening, but that only makes it all the more impressive.
They will go up to strangers on the street to compliment their outfits. The odds of me doing that are about the same as of me trying to slip Skittles in their pocket while they aren’t looking. It’s not that I think that what my partner is doing is wrong. It’s just something I would never think to do with a stranger. Close friends only, please!
But in watching my partner for almost four years now, it is hard to argue with the facts. Most people seem pretty pleased to get a compliment. A lot of the people you miss miss you, too. And most strangers are nicer than not, especially if you are in a library.
Left to my own devices, I mirror the social involvement of people around me. If someone talks to me, I talk back. If someone invites me to something, I now have permission to invite them to something later. But the downside is, until someone else starts to engage with you, you have very little say over what is going on. Someone else has to welcome you in. And until then, you are out in the cold.
A side effect of this is that I spend a lot of time listening to other people have conversations. To be clear, I’m not talking about eavesdropping. I’m not trying to spy on people. In most cases, I’ve asked the people that I am listening to if I can sit with them. It’s just that I have found with many people, if you are a little shy and kind of awkward, it’s easier for them to just ignore you. And before you know it, you’re learning about all of your coworker’s problems with her daughter’s boyfriend in Arizona. I am a patient, good listener who grew up with a dad who could monologue for an hour without stopping. I have all the skills and experience needed to excel at the job. The danger is that I can get so used to the feeling of fading into the background that I forget that I am still, in a very real way, part of the conversation.
For example, about a month ago, I was in a meeting with four other people. Two were in the room with me and two were on Zoom. After the meeting, the people in the room with me kept talking. I missed the very beginning of the conversation, but it was pretty clear that someone we used to work with had done something they both felt betrayed by. Now, I don’t know who they were talking about. But, whoever it is, it is someone I know. We’ve mostly worked here for the same period of time. So I started running the data. I narrowed it down to two likely candidates and three possible candidates. But before I could assemble my mental “Guess Who” board, they started getting up to leave.
That night, I told my partner about my new mystery. I laid out the cases against the likely candidates and wondered what information I needed to get a clearer answer. As I was telling my partner about this, I realized that they were looking at me with a confused expression. When I asked why, they responded, “You know that you could have just asked them, right?”
I did not know that.
Honestly, it hadn’t occurred to me.
So I responded, “Well, I think by that point they had started having a conversation without me.”
“Did they know that? Weren’t you all sitting at the same small table together?”
They made a fair point, but I wasn’t ready to concede. The point seemed technically true, but not necessarily…actually true.
So I said, “I hear you, but it really felt like they were talking to each other. None of that conversation energy was heading my way.”
They responded, “Look, I am not trying to disagree with you about conversation energy. But even if you weren’t in the conversation at that moment, that doesn’t mean that you couldn’t have said anything. You have a relationship with these people. You know that you can ask them questions, right?”
Again, I did not know.
It hadn’t crossed my mind.
But as I stood in the kitchen, thinking over the radical proposal that my partner was laying out–specifically that I could ask my coworkers about work drama that doesn’t directly impact either of us–I had a realization about the whole situation with Mabel: I should have asked Ana what happened! She probably knew. And if I said that I couldn’t ask Mabel because of the whole her-almost-slapping-me-all-the-time thing, I’m sure she would have understood. I don’t have to live with the ambiguity! Ana knows the answer!
Now, did I look at the archives website to see if Ana still works there? Sure. Does she? No. Do I remember her last name to try and find a way to contact her? Again, no. So, in that way, I do have to live with the ambiguity. But if the exact same thing happens to me again, I’ll know what to do.
Copyright © 2015