People Watching: He

He makes his way to work every morning, knowing fully well that today will be no different from yesterday and tomorrow, none the brighter. 

He hopes the rude man in his office would be on leave, or at least away on client calls. He wishes that the sweet group of new joinees will over-estimate their appetite, order more than they can eat and pass on the leftovers to him. He would usually avoid the leftovers and considered it disrespectful but these newbies have a polite way of passing on food that seems less demeaning. He likes that about them. 

His days are never his own, always based on the temperament of the people in his office. They wake up from the wrong side of their bed and he stands on the receiving end of growls. Their diets sustain because of him, their binges and cravings are his to handle, their spills and drops are his to clean and their impromptu demands are his to fulfill. 

He never understands them, and has now stopped reading much into it. He finds no sense in their hypocrisy and narrates these tales to his mother sometimes. They share a hearty laugh at the plight of the man with the paunch: how he struggles with his food and sustains Mondays on fruits, carrots and cucumber. The week rolls by and when Friday arrives, he is back to his oily roll and the cheese layered cake. Then there is the woman who always seems to drop her drink on the table leading to screeches by people who share the space. She drops her water, ice tea and juice and has ruined many a documents in the aftermath. There was a girl who’s now quit, but she came in every morning with her muddy shoes and stained the marble that he had painfully sparkled. He wondered where she went to make a mess of her expensive shoes and urged to clean it for her. He didn’t care much about the girl herself but wanted to do her the favor to save his floor from her wrath. 

People have come and gone, joined and left and some have even moved on to other cities, they say. But the bunch at hand right now keeps him well and therefore when he takes a quick nap in the noon he wishes them well, too.