Your name is Tess. You recently moved to the big city to pursue your dream job. For the past few weeks, you have been searching for a couch on Craigslist. You finally found another listing after the last one you responded to flaked out on you. You are currently standing in the lobby of the building where the lister resides. It is a slightly warm spring morning. You are thinking about grabbing a bite to eat after this.

What will you do?

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You pull your phone out from your pocket.

Looks like you're a little bit early.

You snap a picture of it. You’re… not really sure if your mom would be all that receptive to it? But it's been awhile since you've talked to her, so you guess it couldn't hurt.

You also send it to your best friend.

You couldn’t! Your preemptive guilt at the thought of someone having to clean up your hypothetical mess dissuades you from the idea.



That and the security cameras.

Unfortunately, there are no couches in the lobby to steal. Just these big cushiony seats that trick you into thinking they’ll be comfortable as hell, but end up being super stiff.

Yep. Just what you expected. You squirm around for a few minutes trying to get comfortable.



You scroll through your various social media feeds to past the time. But you can't help but feel something worming around inside of you...



It’s a little bit of anxiety but also... satisfaction? You think that’s a decent term for it.

A couch is the last thing your apartment really needs before you feel you can really call it a home. You can do all sorts of things with a couch, like watch TV or relaxing and reading a good book. You can finally invite your friends over and not have to worry about not having anywhere comfortable for them to sit. You’ll invite them over for cool adult things, like dinner parties. Not that you really need a couch for the dinner party itself, but you guess they can use it as a place to wait while you finish cooking? Or like… to play charades afterwards? Do people do that at dinner parties? You realize actually have no idea what people do at dinner parties. Aside from eating dinner, that is. That was a bad example.

Basically what you’re trying to say is…. that... this couch is going to be the proverbial cherry on the cake of your new life as an independent adult. That’s a nice way to put it, you think.



Your daydreaming is interrupted by incoming texts.

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It's your mom. That's pretty much the response you expected. Your response would be "the welcome mat in the dude who i'm buying a couch from's lobby", but you already know she'll start grilling you. You know exactly what to expect based on her usual line of questioning. "Where are you? Do you know him? Are you with someone?"

You'll reply a little later.



God, this chair sucks.

The lobby is empty. You haven’t seen anyone enter the building since you entered like 10 minutes ago. You guess maybe people don’t really hang out in lobbies? Still, this building is extremely tall. You’d’ve thought you’d see at least ONE person.

Well, you guess there’s the receptionist.

You literally just noticed them. Why on earth would they be cardboard???? What a silly thought. You’re pretty sure you saw them move, anyway.



Upon closer inspection, you find the receptionist is actually just… you’re not even sure what these things are called. One of those inflatable things with the electric fans. People put them out on their lawns sometimes? Like around holidays or whatever.

You thought the fans on these things were deafeningly loud, but you can’t hear anything from this one.

You give the management a piece of your mind.