Life · 015
The Man Who Collected Little Boxes
His desk was a disaster. His paper clips, on the other hand, were sorted to perfection.
Delivery · Fifth Floor Dispatches · 014
GTA: West Island
The pickup took seconds, so the return should take two minutes. That was the first mistake.
Life · 013
We Spent a Century Looking for a Common Language. Maybe We Don't Need One
For more than a century, people searched for a common language. AI may be making the whole idea unnecessary.
Delivery · Fifth Floor Dispatches · 012
The PIN That Didn't Matter
The building looked ordinary from outside. Inside, one smiling man at the end of a long-term care hallway changed the scale of everything I had been worrying about.
Delivery · Fifth Floor Dispatches · 011
You Have Arrived
The address existed, the dot on the map existed, and apparently the house existed too. The only missing piece was a way in.
Delivery · Fifth Floor Dispatches · 010
Entering Like You Were Never There
At first, every entrance rattled and everyone looked. Eventually I learned that adult life may be mostly about knowing how to handle doors.
Life · 009
Political Recycling
No rallies. No Facebook arguments. My political participation came down to deciding which bin got the flyer.
Delivery · Fifth Floor Dispatches · 008
The Other Side of the Fence
According to physics, we were half a metre apart. According to daycare rules, we were several minutes apart by car.
Delivery · Fifth Floor Dispatches · 007
The Rules of Waiting
A Montreal ER and a McDonald’s dinner rush have more in common than they should. In both places, arguing rarely moves the queue — but in delivery, every extra minute also costs money.
Delivery · Fifth Floor Dispatches · 006
The Bag Was Sealed. Technically.
The stickers were perfect. The bag was wide open. Apparently the new security system was designed to protect the stickers.
Delivery · Fifth Floor Dispatches · 005
My Favourite Customer Is the One Who Doesn’t Want to See Me
Leave at door. Do not knock. Do not ring. Perfect. Meet at door? That is where the acting begins — especially when the building has its own ideas about who may use the elevator.
Work · 004
A Healthy Lifestyle. With Minor Adjustments.
The consulting contract vanished, there was no regular EI cushion in my situation, and DoorDash could start almost immediately. What looked like a one-week interruption slowly became a new map of Montreal.
Life · 003
Build the Fence. We'll Move the Deadline Later.
The safety argument made sense. The several-thousand-dollar retrofit was mandatory. Then, less than two weeks before the deadline, Quebec decided everyone could have more time.
Delivery · Fifth Floor Dispatches · 002
Buzzer Code: Lambert
The buzzer code was a name, 715 led to a French recording, and the Amazon packages by the door started to make perfect sense.
Delivery · Fifth Floor Dispatches · 001
Fifteen Bags, One Salmon, and the Fifth Floor
Fifteen Walmart bags. One wrong apartment. Fifth floor. Then the salmon enters the story.