A senior engineer at a Bay Area software company decided in December that he wanted out. He has been, in careful escalating fashion, trying to get himself fired ever since. His performance metrics keep going up. He has been promoted twice. He is now, formally, a director. He does not know what to do.
A woman in Nashville matched with her husband of eleven years on Hinge. He was, according to his profile, single. Never married. Looking for something serious. She was — very obviously — not single. She has been sitting with this for six weeks. She has not, so far, brought it up.
A woman in Sacramento has, for eleven months, been receiving push notifications from a Ring doorbell somewhere in Ohio. She has never installed the app. Nobody knows why the notifications come to her phone. She has, over the eleven months, come to know the family whose doorbell it is. She has begun to care about them.
An 82-year-old man in Miami has, for two years, been writing highly detailed Yelp reviews for restaurants in cities he has never been to. The reviews are lyrical, specific, and completely fabricated. He has forty-seven followers. Yelp has not caught on. His granddaughter has just found out.
A sixth-grader in Seattle has been operating a small commercial library from inside his backpack. Books rent for a nickel a day. Late fees are a penny. He has, at last count, seventy-two books in circulation. The school librarian has just found out. She is furious. She is also, secretly, impressed.
A woman in Atlanta has been sending an anonymous $200 a month to the servicer of her ex-boyfriend’s student loans for three years. He does not know it is her. He does not know it is anyone. He has, twice, called the servicer to try to figure out who is doing it. They have not been able to tell him.
A woman in Brooklyn discovered, one Sunday morning, that the New York Times had — in a small obituary printed on page A22 — misidentified her as the deceased. It is not her. The person who died had the same name and the same neighborhood. She has been trying, for four months, to get the paper to run a correction. They have not, so far, been willing.
A 43-year-old professional podcaster’s mother started, in retirement, a podcast called “Small Things I Have Thought About.” Two years later, the mother’s show has more listeners than the daughter’s professionally produced one. The daughter is proud. The daughter is furious. The mother does not check the numbers.