the secret lives of package delivery drivers

as most of you know, i work at home and, between continual shipments from my office and our endless love of online shopping, i'm here to receive a lot of deliveries. this means our delivery guys know me and we exchange pleasantries as we exchange packages and signatures. though there is a slightly larger cast of characters that come bearing gifts, our leading men are the cute little latin ups driver with the huge white smile and the wilfred brimleyesque, grandfatherly fedex driver.

most of the time, the ups delivery guy is super-friendly with a smile that corrugates both sides of his face. as a home office worker, i like to see another smiling face from time to time, and i can usually count on getting that little happiness fix when he stops in with some amazon purchases. once in a while, i've seen mr. ups driving his open brown truck about town with a sullen expression, and then turn and wave brightly to me, beaming his beatific grin. i've thought, "hm... is that a thinking face or is he like, man, i hate driving this stupid truck with no doors in the winter."

grandpa fedex sees that a lot of my packages come from a cheerleading company so, when he brings a particularly heavy box [usually filled to the brim with scoresheets for a competition], he'll heave the box into my doorstep and say, "hello, dear. looks like they shippped you a cheerleader this time!" we chuckle at the old-man humor and he says, "have a good day."

he dropped a small box of staff applications to me last week and asked me how i was doing. "i'm doing well; how are you?"

"not so good. okay, have a good weekend!" he replied and walked off.

yesterday, he came bringing more fedex supplies that i ordered and again, asked me how i was. i replied, "great, how are you?" head down, he dropped the stuff inside the door and said, "have a good day," and left.

do i ask him more? do i stop asking altogether? it's sort of awkward. i sure hope he's okay.