The Faces Tell The Real Story About Work
On weekday mornings, the STA Plaza is a good place to see into the future.
Because if you study the faces of people getting off buses downtown, you can almost tell what kind of day they’re going to have. That is, if you believe in self-fulfilling prophecy.
Friday morning between 7:40 and 8:10, the facial forecasts covered a broad spectrum.
Some men and women stepped briskly down onto the sidewalk with quietly confident expressions. Their looks said “I’m ready … let’s do it.”
Others practically winced. The day had barely begun and already they were in retreat.
It wasn’t a simple matter of the suits seeming upbeat and the sleepy slackers looking diffident or downcast. No, the morning masks on display were highly personal projections. They defied typecasting.
Thoughts and daydreams are private matters, of course. But you didn’t have to be a mindreader to know some of these people felt fine about where they were headed while others were soaked by a wave of dread.
You would think most people would just have a blank expression at that hour. But if you really looked, the clues were there.
The No. 33 Manito and the No. 34 Cable Add buses arrived on Riverside at about the same time. And the disembarking passengers quickly merged into a blend of headphones and sack lunches. But a couple of faces seemed highlighted.
One guy in jeans and a windbreaker headed toward the Seafirst Center with the kind of look that could have come from flashing back to a lover’s compliment. Unless serious, unsuspected downers loomed, he was someone on his way to a tolerable day.
In contrast, a thirtysomething woman in a dark blue business-like outfit got off her bus with what was either a toothache or the painful vision of an abusive boss. Just a guess.
Over on the Sprague side, a bald guy in a tan jacket burst out of the Plaza doors and went sprinting after the No. 9 East Sprague bus, which had pulled out but was stopped for the light at Post. Angling around, he looked like a lineman trying to get out and lead the blocking on an end sweep.
“He made it,” a teenage girl on the sidewalk said to no one in particular as she watched him climb aboard.
That guy was just another stranger. Still, she smiled.
Sometimes people are rooting for us and we don’t even know it.
, DataTimes MEMO: Being There is a weekly feature that visits gatherings in the Inland Northwest.