In September, I volunteered to teach a Saturday class at 7am on the Upper West Side. Now it’s one thing to wake up four times per week before 5am but it’s entirely different to wake up at 4:30am on a SATURDAY in order to somehow shlep myself to the other side of the planet (aka the Upper West Side) to teach. And, without the use of my bike, this endeavor would require traveling on three separate subway lines. The most surprising part of the entire situation is that people actually wake that early on a Saturday to take a yoga class.

Although they’re awake and present, it seems to be quite clear that they don’t really want to be there. So part of a Bikram Yoga class is respecting the fact that the class is a moving meditation and that there should be a sense of stillness and focus between postures. So one of the ways that we embody that is to stand in a neutral position in between. I had no idea what I had gotten myself into, teaching class that morning, until I asked a 53-year-old gentleman to relax his arms down by his side in order to assume this neutral position. I had to ask him three or four times over the course of the ninety-minute class and at one point he simply said “No.” It’s my job to get this man, who has twenty-five years of wisdom and life experience over me and a salary which is ten times what I’m making, to stop putting his hands on his hips. And his response — in front of the entire class — was simply “No.”

Hey…whatever. I suppose some people come to yoga class, not to learn and move as a group, but instead to do whatever the hell they want. Fine. Later in class, one of the female students felt the need to let me know that she was cold. I suppose I should feel lucky that she didn’t just open her mouth and blurt it out but what she did do was rub her hands up and down her biceps as if she was shivering. So, it’s the first class of the day (at 7am on a Saturday morning,) and I’ve only taught at this particular studio a few times so granted, the heat is not blasting. But I assure you that, at a balmy 103°, there is no way that this woman is so cold that she’s shivering.

And I work in a grocery store. Every once in a while I have to remind myself of this. And not only to I work in just any old grocery store, but I work in the busiest grocery store in Manhattan. At one point, the Union Square location was quoted as grossing over a million dollars per week. Selling food. After completing the grueling process of inventory, a few months ago, it was calculated that we were missing over $700,000 worth of food. Yup. Somewhere, over the course of the previous three months, we had managed to misplace more than a half of a million dollars of eggs, frozen enchiladas, and pumpkin butter.

The store can be so busy and overwhelming that, at one point, a woman passed out in line. She had accomplished the feat of making it all the way through the serpentine line with a cart full of her favorite products while having to say “excuse me” to at least thirty-five other frenzied shoppers with their brimming carts. She survived the entire ordeal, all the way to Register Three, before toppling over — cart and all — into the guy next to her who was patiently waiting for his receipt so that he could rip into his Dark Chocolate Covered Almonds with Sea Salt and Turbinado Sugar.