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METROPOLITAN DIARY

‘Maybe This Was His Plan for Telling Me I Was Being Hired Full Time?’

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.

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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


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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


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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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Dear Diary:

It was August and we were in Union Square buying our first television. We went into a dingy store that was part of a local electronics chain.

We had joked whenever we passed it that the store was haunted. Maybe the $400 or so that we had to spend would slow its seemingly inevitable demise.

After a bit of deliberation — I wanted small and restrained; he wanted something appropriate for a sports bar — we found one we could agree on.

Just then, a salesman rushed down the empty aisle to applaud our Goldilocks-style compromise. He excused himself to get some paperwork, accidentally leaving a small, well-worn notebook flopped open on the counter in front of us.

I stole a glance, taking in some names and numbers under the glare of my well-mannered boyfriend’s judgmental eye.

I was just about to look away when I noticed a phrase toward the bottom: NEVER GIVE UP ON YOURSELF. All capital letters, and it had been traced over and over and underlined several times in heavy ballpoint pen.

At that moment, I would have ordered 10 big screens and a surround-sound system to match. But I did not.

The store closed eight years later, and the boyfriend is now my husband. I don’t know where the salesman is, but I think about him often. I hope he moved on to bigger and better things.

— Erin Bradley


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Dear Diary:

I was walking home from a yoga class on the Upper West Side. I stopped at a sidewalk fruit cart to buy a bunch of grapes.

Instead of the fruit seller who was usually there, a man holding two bananas seemed to be minding the cart.

I asked him the price of grapes.

“That’s my taxi,” he said. “I’m here to buy fruit like you, and fast before I get a ticket.”

Looking around for someone to take our money, I suggested that the fruit seller might be in Chipotle buying lunch.

The taxi driver checked there while I stood by the fruit.

No luck.

“Maybe we could leave the money for our purchases under the cherries?” I suggested.

By now, several other people had stopped and were picking out oranges and mangoes. The taxi driver and I looked at each other.

“I’ll bag the fruit,” he said. “You collect the money.”

A few minutes later, the fruit seller emerged from a nearby store and I handed her the money. She smiled and thanked us.

After paying for his bananas, the taxi driver turned and gave me a high five.

“Nice working with you,” he said.

— Catherine Benton

Read all recent entries and our submissions guidelines. Reach us via email diary@nytimes.com or follow @NYTMetro on Twitter.

Illustrations by Agnes Lee

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section MB, Page 7 of the New York edition. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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