Do you work here? I flew to Albuquerque to speak at a national conference. Someone asked if I worked the door.

This is a submission for the 2026 WeCoded Challenge: Echoes of Experience I get asked if I work here. A lot. Target. Hallmark. Grocery stores. I'll be in jeans and a t-shirt, baseball cap on, holding my own cart, my own bags, clearly in the middle of my own shopping, and someone will walk up and ask where something is. Or skip the question entirely: "Do you work here?" I never do. After a while, you stop being surprised. You start keeping track without trying. What you were wearing. How you were standing. Who asked. What they saw when they looked at you, and what they decided it meant. The catalog builds on its own. It gets heavy. In March 2026, I flew to Albuquerque for the NACM Midyear Conference, the National Association for Court Management. I was there to present. My session was about whether courts should invest in building internal AI capacity through their frontline staff, and I used my own work as the case study. Jury eligibility chatbots. Document processing with AWS Textract