midday
Gregor hardly slept at all , either night or day . Sometimes he would think of taking over the family 's affairs , just like before , the next time the door was opened ; he had long forgotten about his boss and the chief clerk , but they would appear again in his thoughts , the salesmen and the apprentices , that stupid teaboy , two or three friends from other businesses , one of the chambermaids from a provincial hotel , a tender memory that appeared and disappeared again , a cashier from a hat shop for whom his attention had been serious but too slow , - all of them appeared to him , mixed together with strangers and others he had forgotten , but instead of helping him and his family they were all of them inaccessible , and he was glad when they disappeared . Other times he was not at all in the mood to look after his family , he was filled with simple rage about the lack of attention he was shown , and although he could think of nothing he would have wanted , he made plans of how he could get into the pantry where he could take all the things he was entitled to , even if he was not hungry . Gregor 's sister no longer thought about how she could please him but would hurriedly push some food or other into his room with her foot before she rushed out to work in the morning and at midday , and in the evening she would sweep it away again with the broom , indifferent as to whether it had been eaten or - more often than not - had been left totally untouched . She still cleared up the room in the evening , but now she could not have been any quicker about it . Smears of dirt were left on the walls , here and there were little balls of dust and filth . At first , Gregor went into one of the worst of these places when his sister arrived as a reproach to her , but he could have stayed there for weeks without his sister doing anything about it ; she could see the dirt as well as he could but she had simply decided to leave him to it .