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Who we tend to be to one another.

I find myself in a funny moment. I probably spend more of each day interacting with people than at any other moment in my life. But something is different about these interactions. As a middle-aged dad with a job and grandiose artistic ambitions, free time is scarce.

Friends have moved away. The city is expensive. This is bad for the things that should matter to me. I’m a stranger, a coworker and a customer for more of my waking hours than anything else, even a father or a husband.

Beyond this personal midlife red-shift, I hear tell of a slip away from friendship in the broader world. People cite statistics to this effect, proving loneliness like the weather. At the same time, I spend more time in screens, which remove me from in-person conversation. They often leave me lost in a buzz of vague demands where urgent priorities mingle easily with pointless distraction.

It makes me think of who I’ve been to others, and who I am to them these days.

Hey, stranger

To be a stranger is erotic, though it’s also a crushing disadvantage. In big cities, the atmosphere of eroticism and opportunism can overcome those disadvantages. In a small town, they may straight-up murder you for your charm.

Customer services

To be a customer is to be quite entitled to a few specific things. Just don’t push it.

Co-worker

This is someone who’s necessarily not a friend, but to whom one is unfailingly friendly. The distinction between this and a friend stings at going-away drinks where the departing coworker gets emotional. They want it to have meant something. But it's too late. The law is clear as glass and stiff as steel: Garbage in, garbage out.

Colleague

This one is funny. I call my boss and the occasional employees I’ve had colleagues, mostly because I despise authority while working in rigidly hierarchical organizations.

It’s a lie. Really, this is a customer situation. Your boss is your customer, and you’re the customer of the people who work for you.

The worst is when I colleague it about people with whom I might have been great friends, if only time, money and the crushing compromises demanded by each had allowed.

The downgrade

This is subtle, but it lingers like a slap. A friend devolves to an acquaintance, or a colleague. A colleague becomes a former co-worker. Or a friend becomes a stranger. You’re an ex. You’re kind of a problem. You see how thin it was all along. Something happens, and you’re no longer a customer to the insurance company, but a case. Don’t forget your case number. You’re a sad sack asking for a favor.

The upgrade

People surprise you. This is also subtle. It’s nice, but makes me feel ashamed when I didn’t see it coming. Maybe the other person felt weaker than they let on when I was kind. Maybe I was reflexively dismissive of the situation, and of them. Maybe they liked me more than I can understand, for reasons that may never even occur to me.

Fellow customers

I think that one of the real tragedies of my lifetime is the escalating dominance of customer-hood as the default mode of interaction.

Everyone is hustling. There’s a sense of being customers of one another. A customer isn’t a citizen. It’s not a neighbor. It’s not a friend.

A world in which we’re all judged on the quality of our services