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Thus ends my session as amateur psychologist, to the relief of both of us, probably. Whatever the moment was—George revealing something of himself or me just imagining it—it’s over. We talk for a while longer; then, inevitably, the phone rings (“Hullo, Sunny, is that you? Yes, the memoir is almost finished. Just a few more pages. Actually, yes, I am free tonight …”) and his attention drifts off. I sneak out of the apartment and make the long trip back to Staten Island.

ALIENATION OF LABOR

NEW YORKERS SPEND A LOT OF TIME IN DELIS. IT’S NOT uncommon for us to see the same customers walk through the door five or six times a day. Some people act as if our store is part of their home and come in wearing pajamas or stroking an iguana; some stroll through the aisles for an hour while having an intimate phone conversation at the top of their voice. The way these people act has a desperate adolescent “look at me” quality, and at the same time there’s a certain haughtiness, an attitude of “What, you didn’t hear? This is New York. Get over it.” And, of course, they’re right. What would New York be without bad behavior? And where would people exhibit it if not in delis?

To New Yorkers a convenience store is essentially a public place, more like a park than, say, a private restaurant. Not long ago a customer came in and asked me to throw away an empty soda can. Then she started giving me garbage from her purse, and then she went out to her car and started bringing me fast food wrappers and coffee cups. I was starting to feel like I had a Department of Sanitation sticker on my forehead and was thinking about saying something nasty, but I held back. It’s better, I’ve learned, to just take people’s trash when they hand it to you, because the alternative is to pick it up yourself off the street later.

Similarly, it’s always hard to say no when people ask to use the bathroom, especially if they come in grimacing and clutching themselves in agony, as they usually do. If you’re not motivated by sympathy to say yes, then you’re at least concerned about the possible effect on your store of saying no. The problem is that after using the bathroom, people tend to skip the requisite courtesy of purchasing even a token pack of gum. If I were a better person I’d look at them and think, I’m glad they’re feeling better now, but cleaning bathrooms tends to shrivel one’s reserves of compassion, so instead I glare and resist the temptation to ask, “Did you smile for the hidden camera in the ceiling?”

The most annoying thing customers do is a move I call The Placeholder, which happens when a person walks into a store, grabs an item and puts it on the counter before going off to do the rest of his shopping. When he finishes, he comes back to the register and inserts himself at the front of the line by virtue of having left that item as a kind of proxy—a Placeholder.

There’s no logic to this system. If we all used Placeholders, every checkout line would devolve into chaos and people would end up bashing each other in the head with cans of kidney beans. The move is so brazenly antisocial that would-be critics find themselves sputtering with stupefaction, and usually looking to me as the ostensible authority to sort it all out. (Which I rarely do, because typically the person who used The Placeholder is also the sort of person you do not want to get into a confrontation with.)

Of course, there’s a flip side to annoying customers, and that’s annoying deli clerks. Not long ago I went into a fancy Korean deli in SoHo, looking for a snack. The store happened to be empty when I walked in, which didn’t prevent the puckish middle-aged woman standing at the register from ringing up every item I touched, even when I was still ten feet away. Not liking to be rushed, I began randomly picking up items and putting them back, but it didn’t seem to faze the woman at all. On the contrary, to let me know she was waiting, she jingled my change.

Sometimes New Yorkers take it too far—the pushiness, the constant,