The sugar caddy

At the window end of every table, wedged between the salt shaker and a laminated ad for the Sunday special, the caddy holds four packet colors in a rack built for three: white, yellow, pink, and the blue that arrived sometime in the last decade and has never been given its own slot. Packets settle by weight over a shift, sugar toward the bottom, sweetener toward the top, so a hand reaching in blind after the lunch rush tends to surface pink before anything else. The chrome corners have dulled from being wiped down with the same rag as the tabletop, a practice the health inspector has twice noted without ever writing a formal citation. Restocking happens each morning from a cardboard box kept beneath the register, a task assigned to whoever arrives first and rarely discussed, since it takes under two minutes and draws no notice when done and considerable notice when skipped. A packet or two escapes the caddy most days, sliding under the napkin holder or behind the ketchup, to be found weeks later slightly curled at the corners but structurally sound. Coffee drinkers use two packets on average, tea drinkers one, and the caddy is refilled at a rate that has stayed remarkably constant across three changes of ownership, three menu redesigns, and one brief, unpopular experiment with sugar cubes that lasted four months before the caddy, unchanged throughout, returned to its usual duty.

Doreen Fitch