And there's X, a regular - daily - who comes into the restaurant. Occasionally, more seldom, we talk above the light and polite banter of service and customers.
"You look tired" he tells me.
It's possible, it's Christmas, this schedule, this job, who isn't tired? I agree. I'm not particularly, but, really, overall I am.
Every other day now, he comes in, tells me how tired I look. Sometimes I am, more ofter I'm not, but to him I look tired. I worry, less that I look tired, everyone here looks tired, it's the job, the season, there are countless excuses, but I worry about the Placebo Effect.
By which I mean that somehow - or other - he's reinforcing a deeply held unconscious belief that this job is killing me. Not the job, really, but the belief.
A sort of negative Placebo effect.
We all know that cigarettes are bad for you, smoke them and you'll die any one of a thousand nasty deaths. But there's no research published on the effect of all the dire warnings posted on packs, the perpetual reinforcement of the negative effects of tobacco, that must - sooner or later - in their own right - lead to an early demise as well. The warnings may well be as bad, may even be worse, than the product itself. No one considers this.
Every time he tells me how tired I look I think to see a doctor. I'm feeling fine, or tired, some days he's right, a stopped clock is right twice a day, but mostly I think it's just his way of making conversation, of expressing some empathy for a grueling schedule - not empathy so much as trying to get the most out of the service, pretend to be a good guy, I could ignore it as I do so many other things, but always I'm wondering if somehow this isn't some sort of negative Placebo, an incentive to be sick, develop a terminal illness simply as a result of an idea that lodged itself in your brain and gestated until it bore malevolent fruit....
There's not so much research on this - the negative placebo - no one in good health wants to volunteer for an experiment who's outcome can only be unpleasant, but I wonder as to the cumulative effect of negative beliefs or observations, lifestyle warnings, an opportunity there for some young and budding scientist or graduate student to write upon the Negative Placebo.