Are You Secretly a Train Wreck?

1. You have a gas-station bathroom moment.

Somehow, it happens. It's dark out (or sunny). You're traveling (or on the way to work or a first date or an interview). You pull frantically into the gas station, run into the bathroom and try to slap on 35 minutes of makeup in five minutes, with an evil, yellow, single-watt bulb as the only light. Or you try to scrub away the impossible stain on your blouse. Or you rip off that blouse and try to breast-pump over the tiny sink, which may or may not have an outlet nearby. True, gas-station bathrooms don't usually have mirrors. But they do have chrome paper-towel dispensers (with no paper towels). On that scratched, dull service, a version of yourself is reflected and that version is saying, "This pace is not sustainable."

2. Both clerks at the wine store know your name.

3. You spend longer hours at work—but don't get more done.

How's that possible? Uh, look at your office environment. When co-workers are rude, unkind and disrespectful in a workplace, women tend to...work harder, found a recent study at the University of New England. It might be time to act like a man—or at least like the men in this particular study—and just leave.

4. You know how to turn the lights on in every hotel room.

Including the one with a master switch in the hall which controls the bedroom light and/or the bathroom light and/or the two bedside table lights. Except when it doesn't—which you can tell in one glance, while still holding the handle of your roller bag. Perhaps initially, you saw this as a triumph. You had mastered a skill. The next 7,892 trips for work, you thought, were going to be so much easier. Then you thought...wait a minute...7,892 more trips?