Thanks for helping me figure it out, knew there had to be another use for the button! Incidentally, playing through it again, can't get over how damn funny the sprites are. Love the swaying animation of the little dude.
Sorry my last post was confusingly-worded. Basically, my first time through the game I found an actual game-breaking bug that gets you stuck in the sky if you exit via the top left of the "people outside" screen. So my insane logic, after I found the actual bug (the item), was that I had to take it to the game-breaking bug (which totally seemed like it could be intentional in this kind of game). So I guess this is a bug report (with the qualifier that it didn't interfere with the fun, since I was replaying it anyway).
You're not the first person to ask if I've played Kentucky Route Zero so I think I really need to get on that! I actually bought it on my Switch a while back and am definitely gonna finally play it soon.