Another 4 inches of fluffy snow fell last night after sundown, after residents can justifiably abdicate their sidewalk-shoveling responsibilities until the next morning. So when I left the house at 7:15am, I could not reasonably whine about how the laziness of my fellow citizens was endangering my life by forcing me to walk in the streets. The streets were empty anyway, except for rivulets of sludge and the occasional plow truck adding to the snow piles alongside of Massachusetts Avenue, which were still white and pure and fresh. The morning felt peaceful.
Despite there being no cars, buses, bicycles, or people on the road, the T still managed to be packed. Leave it to the MBTA to reduce the number of trains to exactly the level needed to maintain a cozy, crowded crush of passengers. The trains were running on a Sunday schedule under the premise that everyone would be too busy pondering the state of race relations in the United States to want to take the subway anywhere.
Martin Luther King Jr. Day used to be a holiday that corporate America would ignore. I’ve worked nearly every Martin Luther King Jr. Day for the past 8 years, and every year, the streets of Downtown Boston become a little more empty, which is a nice sight.
At lunchtime, Cosi was so dead that the infamous sassy salad lady, who is regarded with fear and respect for the no-nonsense, queenly attitude with which she takes each salad order, was doubling as a sandwich preparer. “A TBM lite,” I order, which is a tomato-basil-mozzarella sandwich with light vinaigrette dressing. She flounders for a second, seizing a flatbread and staring blankly at the ingredients. “TBM,” she repeats. “Now what could that stand for?” She looks at me and laughs, a behavior which sort of stunned me. I’ve never seen her when she wasn’t expertly grabbing salad ingredients and yelling things like “Ceasar! Greek! Cobb!”
I was not happy to be at work. Maybe that’s sort of an empty statement, like “I’m so peeved to be sick with the flu” or “Getting in a car accident was most chagrinning,” yet most days I’m pleased to have my singular, insignificant place within the greater Rat Race. But when you take away all of the other rats, there is a sudden emptiness that amplifies the hollowness of working life. The race has paused, the other rats are gone, and there’s just a handful of us trying to be motivated on our own initiative.
