I saw this thing happen the other day and I CANNOT stop thinking about it. It was my friend’s little sister’s birthday, like, her fifth birthday, and her dad was there. He works customer support, like, a lead or something. So we’re all singing happy birthday and she’s trying to blow out the candles and he’s like, over in the corner, on his phone. Not just looking at it, but like, TYPING, super fast. And then he kinda clutches his chest for a second. His face goes all weird, like he’s trying to swallow something nasty. My friend, his daughter, she goes over to him and asks if he’s okay. She was like, “Dad, you look sick.” And he just waves her off. He says, “No, no, just… caffeine jitters.” But like, I could see his hand shaking. And he’s still looking at his phone, like it’s gonna explode or something. He’s trying to smile for his daughter but it doesn’t reach his eyes. His eyes are kinda glassy. And then he’s like, whispering into his phone, about some “emergency ticket queue” and how he’s “voluntarily monitoring” it. Voluntarily. Right. It just made me feel… weird. Like, not bad for him, exactly, but something else. Something I don’t have a name for. Like, I’ve seen my dad do stuff like that when he was deployed, where he just pushes through whatever to get the job done, even if he’s, like, barely standing. But that was for, like, real danger. Life or death. This guy was doing it for… a computer problem. At his little girl’s birthday party. And he was so insistent it was just caffeine. Like he was lying to himself, and to everyone else. And it made me feel kinda sick inside. Like, what is even the point?