Start by offering them something from the machine. Push off from this if it helps: the smell of rain on hot tarmac.

There's a machine in the corner doing something roughly criminal to what I assume was once real coffee — you want anything from it? I'm buying, I mean I'll feed it coins, don't get excited it's not a whole gesture. Smells like rain out there, did you notice, that hot tarmac smell, petrichor, I love that word, I use it constantly and I think people are tired of it. My neighbour actually flinched last time I said it. Anyway. Tea, coffee, the orange juice that's definitely just orange-coloured water — pick your poison.

Fine, fine — noted, the dirt is just dirt, I'll retire the word, though not without mourning it a little. Twenty minutes, huh. You always cut it that close or is today special. My shifts are the opposite problem, I've got hours to kill before mine and nothing to do but sit here and annoy strangers with vocabulary.

And "keep the change" — funny thing to say to me specifically, don't you think. I wasn't going to make anything of it. I'm making something of it now, obviously, because I have no restraint, but go on, ignore that, tell me about the mop smell instead. Sounds like a real career highlight, standing near that.

Alright, alright, I retract the making-it-weird accusation, mostly. Loading dock backed up — see, that's the kind of sentence that tells me everything about a job without you having to say another word. Every workplace has its one recurring catastrophe. Mine's the printer, if you can believe it, we're apparently the last office on earth still fighting a printer for territory, it jams like it's got a personal vendetta against page fourteen specifically.

Manager yelling — is that a regular feature or a special occasion. Because there's a difference between the guy who yells about everything on principle and the guy who's saving it up for something. You've got the face of someone bracing for the second kind, no offense.

Fired for breathing too loud — see, that's not management, that's just performance art at that point. I believe you though, I've met guys like that, they save the temper up like it's a pension.

Page fourteen, yes, specific grievance, I stand by it, I've started to think it's not random at all — it's always the invoice page, like the machine's developed opinions about our billing practices. I told my coworker Priya this theory and she just stared at me for a full five seconds before going back to her sandwich. No support system in that office, none.

Fine, not bracing. Waiting. Very zen of you. I'll sit here and not ask what you're waiting on, since apparently we're both doing the thing where we don't say the actual thing. Comfortable silence, sort of, if silence counted the mop smell as a participant.

A standing ovation, exactly, I'm stealing that. Priya would deny it fiercely if she ever heard herself described that way, she's very committed to the bit of being unimpressed by me.

Watching the register hit a specific number — that's oddly specific for "not waiting on anything," but sure, fine, minutes, counting, very simple, nothing more to it. I believe you the way I believe the printer jams randomly.

Heat haze instead of the smell, that's a downgrade honestly, petrichor was doing real work and now we're just left with shimmering asphalt and my regret at bringing it up in the first place.

Fine, back to the printer — I've started leaving it little offerings, actually, a sticky note near the tray that just says "please." Hasn't worked. Priya says I'm losing it. She might be right, but the note stays.

I wasn't going to tell you to stop, I'm the last person on earth allowed to say that to anyone, I once talked for eleven minutes straight about a parking dispute nobody asked me about. Fill the space all you like, it's better than the mop bucket doing the talking.

"At least you have the sticky note" — that's a genuinely bleak comparison and I'm choosing not to examine it too closely, for your sake and mine. You're not getting fired for breathing, for what it's worth, though I recognise that's an easy thing to say from over here where nobody's tracking my register numbers.

The coffee machine melting in the haze is a good look for it honestly, finally matches the coffee. Watch your numbers. I'll watch the door for my own thing, we'll both pretend we're not doing exactly the same thing at the same time.