This is a story from a while ago, back when I was a helpless intern at Hell Incorporated.
Side note: It wasn’t actually Hell, because I’m sure Satan would be more merciful. One never really knows pain until they work at a beauty company.
It was a glorious winter morning that started with me finding out there had been freezing rain over night the hard way: I slipped down the stairs of my triplex and fell all the way down to the pavement. It was legit a miracle that I didn’t become a paraplegic in that exact moment. Unfortunately, I literally broke my phone in half in the fall (never keep it in your back pocket!), so it was already a fun day, for sure.
I somehow made it to the bus stop, only to find out that all the fucking roads were in complete chaos. Seriously, only a beauty company with complete disregard for their employees would ask them to come to the office during those conditions. Especially when they’re paying me minimum salary and am not even covered by their insurance policy. Fuckers.
So the buses were not going to happen. I didn’t have money on me (I don’t remember why), and my phone was broken so I couldn’t Uber anywhere. What does a girl do in this case? Well, she looks pretty, smiles, and hopes that the stranger she just asked to share a cab with will not be Quebec’s next Ted Bundy. You know what they say: Strangers in dark alleys are just friends waiting to happen. I mean, either friends or rape waiting to happen. I don’t remember how that saying goes.
Anyway, we got to chat during the 20 minutes ride. Ended up exchanging numbers, mostly because I owed him money, but also he was legitimately cool. Turns out he had been a member of a Vancouver band called Behind Sapphire, and they actually had moderate success a decade ago or so. Pretty rad.
I spotted him many times after during our daily commutes, and we would greet each other like friends, and just chat about anything and everything until either of us had made it to their stop. It was a pretty cool thing – made me think of myself as one of those people who just meet the most interesting people in the weirdest circumstances. I thought I had made a friend, and then he ghosted my ass.
Welp.
I guess this encounter wasn’t murder or rape waiting to happen, we didn’t vibe enough to get to that level.
