Yahara Journal 2021

The People Watcher Hannah Dotzler As soon as I clocked in for the day, I was ready to go home. I sat down in my boring, plain cubicle, and let out a big sigh. Being an accountant at an insurance company was not fun, but it was my life.

Let’s be honest, I wasn’t there for the pure enjoyment of math and numbers. I was there for the money. Isn’t that why anyone works?

Ideally, I would have opened my own bakery. Baking was my only real passion and happiness in the world. But I didn’t have the money, time, or motivation to actually make that happen. So, there I was, sitting at my desk, dreading the day ahead of me.

There was one good thing about my job, though. I was given the cubicle in front of the window, and our company was on the first floor, allowing me full access to people-watch as much as I pleased, which consumed about 80% of my work shift each day. And being in the heart of New York City allowed for some pretty interesting people-watching.

This day, I was feeling particularly unproductive and decided to spend the whole morning studying the pedestrians. There were two types of people, I realized, in the world. The sad, and the happy.

The sad were way more common than the happy. There were depressed-looking businessmen and women who wore suits and carried briefcases. I swore out of all the years I watched people through that window, I never once saw someone who wore a suit smile. Then, there were people on their cellphones, screaming at the person on the other line. Or there would be people who walked down the street crying, or had puffy, red eyes because they had just finished crying. There would be friends or partners who walked side by side but didn’t say a word to one another. Almost everyone I watched each day looked unhappy.

Every once in a while, though, I would see someone from the happy group. Most of them were young people. Kids would be oohing and ahhing over a bird they saw across the street. College students would be laughing at something they had seen on their phones.

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