Familiar

The other day I saw this girl in the bus I take to the university every day. She looked so familiar that I thought I must have seen her before: maybe she's on some course with me, or the friend of a friend, or maybe she goes to the same aerobics classes?

After some hard thinking, it suddenly dawned on me: she's the cashier at the local grocery store and I see her almost every day! It's sad, somehow, to realise how little attention you pay to people in customer service and how the transactions you have with them are so automatic you don't even think. (But maybe now I don't have to worry about whether people who came to the dry cleaner's I worked at last summer recognise me when they pass me on the street.)