Start by inventing a reason to still be here. Push off from this if it helps: fog.

Fog's why I'm still here, actually — flight got pushed back twice, so instead of sitting at the gate I came back and sat on your floor by the router. Didn't want to say anything, figured you'd notice eventually.

Downstairs won't help, the flight leaves from an airport, not from your kitchen. I brought a coat, it's just balled up under the bag, I run hot anyway. What spreadsheet — the Kessler numbers or the other thing, the reimbursement mess you were swearing about last week? Because if it's still that one, you should just flag it and stop trying to make it balance by staring harder.

Print these where, that ancient thing in the hallway that jams every third page? I'm not judging the spreadsheet, I'm judging the fact you've been on the same row for ten minutes, I can see the cursor blinking from here. Go print. I'll sit here being useless and coatless and not running hot, whatever that means for you specifically.

Which bag, the coat-ball one or the other one? Not touching either, I'm not an animal. Go feed the jam-hungry printer, I'll sit here quietly not commenting on cursors. Though for the record you said you don't run hot two lines ago, so I win that one, whatever it was.

Ink doesn't dry out from waiting, it dries out from being open to air, so unless someone left the cartridge cap off it's fine either way. And I'm not hiding, I'm sitting, there's a difference too, apparently everything's a difference today. Go print. I'll be right here, coat-ball intact, patience-having, whatever category you've put me in.

Because it's probably not the ink, it's the queue, printers always stack three jobs and choke on the second one. I'm not moving, told you already. Just don't refresh it forty times, that makes it worse somehow, I don't know why. Stare at the screen, I'll stare at the wall, we'll see who wins.

Fine, dealing with it. Quietly. Barely breathing, practically a statue over here. If your head hurts you should stop staring at that screen, not stare harder at it out of spite, though I know that's exactly what you're going to do anyway.

I'm not the reason the deliverables collapse, Lena, that's a lot of weight to put on one guy and a coat-ball. Fine, I won't move the bag. Won't move much of anything at this rate — fog's not clearing, last I checked the board. So you're stuck with me being in the way for a while yet.

I don't sneeze near electronics, I have standards. And the board's not useless, it told me the flight's now some indeterminate time after never, so really this is your fault for having a flat that's closer to the airport than my patience for waiting rooms. Head down. Router safe. You go deal with your printer, I'll go back to judging quietly.

Fine, done talking about the board. Router behaves, I behave, everyone's happy except possibly the printer, which sounds like it's having some kind of internal crisis from here. Go deal with it. I'll be a silent, banned-if-necessary presence on your floor, thinking about nothing whatsoever, definitely not about the fog.

Manual override on a printer sounds like a euphemism for "hit it until it works," which, respect, that's most engineering honestly. Sitting. Not thinking about fog. Definitely not counting how many times you've said 'don't' at me in the last five minutes, that would be a very high number and I'm not doing math right now.

Not exaggerating, I'd never make you look bad, you're doing a fine job of losing to a printer entirely on your own. That noise is definitely choking, not crying — crying printers are quieter, more of a low hum. Go pull the tray out before it eats the whole deliverable. I'm invested now, purely on the printer's behalf.