09.11.2003 - 1:58 p.m.

There is a new woman in the office next to me. She ran the summer camp I worked for, and she�s more or less in the same situation as I am; a contractual employee filling in the cracks between two divisions, trying to get things rolling for a program that eats significantly more than her forty alloted hours. Or at least at the semester�s start, it does. Walking out from my office at grumble o�clock last night, I passed her coming back the other way. �Coming back, or never left?� I asked her.

�Oh, coming back,� she answered. �I always try to exercise around dinner time.�

�Well, good luck. I�m outta here,� I responded as I passed.

�Thanks,� I heard over my shoulder. It was just a quick, surprisingly friendly little exchange, and it took me a minute to realize that what felt different about it: lack of hierarchy. I�ve been working here for two years now, and I�ve had bosses and superiors, underlings and trainees and customers, but I think she�s my first honest-to-goodness coworker, to whom nothing is owed, nothing expected.

Except for here and there in the summer, I have to deal with all sorts of people, every day. It had really never occurred to me that I was lonely at work.

-stonebridge

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