Content Warning: This section refers to addiction.

“In college he had been a thin, pallid chain smoker buried behind huge horn-rimmed glasses. He had apparently switched to contact lenses.”

This description of Jimmy McCann provides a quick and simple contrast between the man Morrison remembers and the man he has become, symbolically using corrective lenses to highlight McCann’s transformation. It’s not that his vision has gotten better, but he is using a less noticeable method of correcting it. Like addiction, McCann’s poor eyesight is a permanent state, but now it is invisible to everyone except old acquaintances. This underlines the text’s thematic interest in the inescapability of addiction.

“[Morrison] tried to tell himself that the little worm of jealousy in his stomach was just acid indigestion. He pulled out a roll of antacid pills and crunched one in his mouth.”

McCann is Morrison’s foil at the start of the story. Where McCann is characterized as fit and successful, Morrison is defined by physical and professional limitations. What’s more, Morrison is unwilling to acknowledge this fact to himself, writing off his jealousy as indigestion. This is an example of the wrong medicine being used to cure something psychological, a parallel to Morrison’s many failed addiction treatments.

“Quitters, Inc., was in a new building where the monthly rent on office space was probably close to Morrison's yearly salary. From the directory in the lobby, it looked to him like their offices took up one whole floor, and that spelled money. Lots of it.”

Like McCann, the motif of smiling professionalism, and the unassuming white business card, the initial description of Quitters, Inc.’s office is an innocent and professional façade designed to suggest wealth, success, and professional concern. It later becomes clear that this façade is designed to paper over the organization’s brutal methodology and dodgy origins.