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Overthinking my contact list.
My phone began ringing on Wednesday morning and I answered it with hesitant confusion. “Ha…Hallo?” The evening before, I had received a phone call from an unknown number. A man asked me if I could see the dog downstairs. When I asked what he meant, he replied by asking me if I was Uber. “No.” “Lieferando?” “No.” “Oh, sorry, wrong number!” He hung up before I could tell him that he hadn’t been a bother at all, that I hoped whatever was being delivered to him got there safely, and to have a lovely evening. When my phone screen displayed another unknown number on Wednesday, I thought it’d be a confused Uber customer again. I had already begun considering how to get in touch with the delivery driver who seemed to be using my details. I almost swallowed my tongue when I recognised the voice on the other side of the call. It was my co-worker’s. He offered his help, incase I needed to move any heavy pieces of furniture while I went about photographing them that day. I thanked him and insisted that I would reach out if the need arose. I hung up and returned my gaze to the screen in my hand. I hadn’t saved his number.
After four months of plying my trade at the small furniture company that employs me, I have saved only three phone numbers as contacts in my phone. The first two are the bosses’s numbers. They’ve been in my phone for longer than I’ve worked at the place. The third contact was the one I saved on Wednesday morning. It was the all-round handyman, whom I have had cause to call several times before, whose number appeared on my phone this week, whose number I had not yet committed to my address book.
I haven’t got many co-workers, but more than two-thirds of them remain numbers in a list in our company chat. I greet them as I walk into the building every morning and as I walk out every evening. I look them in their eyes and shake their hands. I often eat with them during our breaks. There isn’t a standardised break time, so I end up eating earlier or later than some or most. On Wednesday, I microwaved my chicken curry and rice and sat outside to eat it about fifteen minutes before the others joined me. I finished my food with them. We politely chatted. The weather or the lunch menu are often favourite topics. The conversation, unlike my lunch, is dry and stale. It is, more or less, the same conversation we had last week, and the week before.
I did not sit with my co-workers in the shade of our building and shoot the breeze for the rest of my one-hour lunch break. I never sit and shoot the breeze with my co-workers for the entirety of my lunch break. I often find myself going for a walk or reading a book or writing something or buying a snack (in rare cases where my breakfast was not filling enough and I was forced to snack on my lunch during the day to such an extent that I needed to supplement my mid-day meal). One could argue, quite convincingly even, that I choose not to spend the entirety of my lunch break having a chin wag with the other furniture pedlars because I do not prefer having such a long break in the middle of the day only to end work at six. One may suggest that I struggle with the thought of losing so much time while at work and so choose, instead, to reallocate some of my break time for relaxing or, perhaps, for something more productive, like writing. Hearing this plea, I would roll the arguments around my mind, savouring their justification and considering their relevance. I would then pose another question. It may be, that I prefer to utilise a portion of my break for personal (read: antisocial) activities. Why, then, do the phone numbers of the co-workers with whom I have pleasant albeit brief interactions remain unsaved?
I don’t know. For me (the task-oriented over-thinker), not having a number saved to my phone is symbolic of holding one at an arm’s length. I don’t save a number in my phone when I believe that I won’t have a lasting or important relationship with said individual. A fellow university student asking me for the answers to some benign exam question; the person I sold my Nintendo Switch to. Largely inconsequential communications. There isn’t any particular reason I haven’t saved those work numbers. I tell myself that I’ve been busy, and I have. I wonder, though, if my subconscious has been at work. I wonder if I feel, in any way, that this job is temporary. My au pair job was only ever going to be for one year. Somehow I can’t see myself at this place in five years. Just like au pairing was a way to get my foot into the door that is Germany, I feel (though I have not always felt) that this job is me getting my foot into a career. Or real financial independence, at least.
They aren’t bad people, my co-workers. They can all be funny and kind and generous. I am happy to serve them and serve with them. Something in me, though, believes (or hopes, even) that it is only for a time. So do I bother to save their numbers? Have they saved mine?
I’m trying to pitch The Task-Oriented Over-Thinker to Dungeons & Dragons as a new legendary monster for players to fight against. Far more relevant (and challenging) than a yawn fire-breathing yawn dragon. If you enjoyed this journal, please subscribe.