The thing about doormen is, often they were doing completely unrelated work, like selling survival gear or bagging pork chops, when something random happened and suddenly they were doormen, tipping their caps and announcing that the in-laws were on the way up with a fruitcake.

And then they stay doormen forever, standing spraddled outside the door, their backs straight as furled umbrellas.

This comes up because it was very nearly a doorman-free city on Wednesday, contract wrangling threatening to put doormen on the picket lines. At the last minute, though, things got hashed out and they were on duty as usual in their showy uniforms, twisting doorknobs and accepting meat deliveries.

Like sentries, doormen have patrolled New York’s apartment buildings for some 150 years. Roughly 10,000 union doormen work in 3,200 apartment buildings in the city. Even though they are as familiar a species as cabdrivers and nannies, and even though they know plenty about the people who inhabit their buildings, relatively little is known about them.