'Maybe This Was His Plan for Telling Me I Was Being Hired Full Time?' Metropolitan Diary.

'A temp’s hopes rise, in a community garden on Sixth Street and more reader tales of New York City in this week’s Metropolitan Diary.

Photo Op
Dear Diary:

During my third week temping for a company in Manhattan, a photographer was hired to take pictures of new employees.

After he had taken photos of three people, the photographer scanned his list. He said that he only needed to take one more picture.

I honestly thought it was going to be of me.

The boss had told me that I was doing a great job. Maybe this was his plan for telling me I was being hired full-time? Maybe I would learn that I was officially joining the company by having my picture taken for the website?

I was feeling great. As the photographer walked toward my desk, my brain started to schedule appointments with doctors thanks to the health insurance I was about to acquire.

It turned out that the last picture the photographer had to take was of a puppy that belonged to one of the company’s executives.

If I’m being honest with myself, they made the right decision. And all these years later, that puppy is still listed as an employee on the company’s website.

— Mike Lemme

Community Garden
Dear Diary:

On a sunny day on a holiday weekend, we paused at a lovely community garden on Sixth Street. There were shade trees, flowers, benches to rest on and a pond with fish flashing red and gold.

A young woman, one in a group of friends, seemed to be setting up a camera in a hidden spot near us. She slid behind a pillar, telling us, with her finger to her lips, that some friends were coming and that she was hiding from them. A mystery!

A young man and woman entered the garden together, waved to the group and then stopped close to the camera, apparently by design, at least on his part.

We couldn’t hear what they were saying, but their body language made it clear it was a very romantic moment.

“If he goes down on one knee,” I whispered, “I’m going to cry.”

And he did.

— Marion Deland

Lime Rickey
Dear Diary:

A sip oceanic, spiked with sour,
salt-skied and sand-grazed, as shivery green
goes the breeze, the seltzery waves
a baby pats, serious in underpants,
rain arriving first as fragrance,
then as clouds converging like gulls, peach-
suited mother wading in,
crabs burying their heads, going, going
goes the ace in the spoke of a bike
on the boardwalk, faster tandem
of a dachshund and mistress teetering
home, unison scream from the Cyclone,
arcades of fish a-swim in the fizz,
screen dark, as lightning projects its matinee
of days-gone-by over the Atlantic.

— Paula Bohince

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https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/22/nyregion/metropolitan-diary.html?