The Ballad of the Guy Across the Alley

Ever since I started at my fab new job, I've been fascinated by the joys and pains of working in a big city. It's great to walk to work, it sucks to pay $12 for lunch every day I forget to make a PB&J. It's lovely having many bars to go to after work, it's a bummer waiting a decade and a half for the bus after staying at the bar a little too long. It's really cool working in a big, modern looking office building, but it is REALLY FUCKING WEIRD seeing other people working in the building six feet away. Except that somehow, I managed to get a guy across the way who's pretty darn cute. So, he's interesting to watch when I'm bored. It's also interesting that when I'm working late or weekends, he seems to be there a lot too. But at the same time, he's more like scenery, the crossing guard I used to watch to zone out at Edison or the rooftop deck where my brooklynite coworkers went to smoke, it doesn't feel real.

However, since I'm looking at him every day, I'm burning up with curiosity. Who does he talk to, what does he do, why did he choose to wear pleated pants? All of which seems kind of good in the spirit of curiosity about the world. But then, last week, after happy hour Friday night, we decided to go from bar A to bar B, and the quickest way there was through the lobby of his building. Of course we were drunk and tried to walk through and of course the security guard would not let that happen, so I asked, as non-chalant as one can be while four beers deep with only half a plate of fries to soak it all up, "What company's on the 6th floor of this building?" And she told me and now, I think guy across the alley has a name.

If I never do anything with this information, is it harmless googling? When does googling cross the line? Is it ever ok to google? Does the fact that anyone could type any random combination of letters in and come up with your name make it ok to do so intentionally? It's a quandary. And what if I ever happened to see him outside of our buildings. Aside from turning forty shades of red, could I ever actually say hi knowing that I've been a tool and looked him up online? I'm morally and etiquettely perplexed.