Part 1: Instructions

Manual headed up the street to his office. Or rather, he headed up the street to the building where his office was. Or rather, he headed up the street to the building where the offices of the company he worked for was.

The street was not quiet at 7am, but it was not bustling. It would not start bustling until 7:30 or 8 o'clock, when the administrative assistants and the support staff started coming in. The people who could and would leave at 3:30 or 4pm to pick up children or groceries or run errands. The street would be in full bustle by 9am when the shops opened. But then there would be a lull around 10am, which is when Manual would take his first coffee break.

Fig. 1: Homburg

Manual was the only man in an overcoat and hat. He liked to point out to people that the hat he wore was not a fedora, no matter what they thought. It was a Homburg. It was hand-made by some long-dead woman in some shop eons ago. Or maybe a man made it. Manual didn't really know. It had been his grandfather's, and Manual had never bothered asking the old man where he got the hat from. This was one of the many gaps in knowledge within Manual. He made a mental note to ask his grandfather about the hat the next time he saw him, though he doubted his grandfather had this information. If worse came to worst, he'd see if there wasn't some traceable information in the hat's lining.

Manual always did the same thing each morning, though today he had  deviated by ordering a small coffee instead of a large. He still wasn't sure how he had done that, but he sensed that his entire day would be changed because of it.

Part 2: A Wrong Step

It was a small coffee. He had remembered asking for a large coffee, but he could be mistaken. He hadn't had any coffee yet, and his brain wasn't working properly. In any case, it really didn't matter as long as he hadn't paid for a large coffee.

Fig 2: A small coffee.

"Excuse me, miss, but I believe I asked for a large coffee. This is a small."

The girl behind the counter looked up from her phone. "You asked for a small?"

"No, I asked for a large. This is a small. I don't really care as long as I didn't pay for a large."

The girl looked confused. She must have been all of 17. She was the daughter of the owner, and obviously didn't like the idea of being there at 7am to dispense coffee to office workers.

"You mean I charged you for a small but you got a large?"

Manual was starting to get frustrated. "No. I ordered a large but you gave me a small. Or at least I think I ordered a large. I forgot how much money I gave you for this coffee."

The girl's face contorted. "Do you want me to check the register?"

Manual was starting to wonder why he even brought it up. "You took my receipt. There's no one else here. You could easily just check it."

The girl sighed. She stared at him as she opened the register and took out a receipt. "I charged you a dollar-fifty, which is the price for a small."

She sighed dramatically and showed him the receipt.

Manual looked at the girl. "I guess I ordered a small," he whispered.

The girl kept staring at him as she slapped the receipt back in the register. Then she took out her phone and no doubt tweeted to all 5 million of her followers how much she hated him and her job.

Part 3: Operations

Manual was high enough on the food chain to merit his own office with walls and a door. He even had a window! His window faced another building, and looked out over a city parking lot, which looked like a concrete garbage dump at this time of the day, before anyone had come into the city. The office workers didn't really take their cars into the city, not unless they had a sales meeting to get to or needed to look important. And if they needed to look important, there were car services for that.

Manual put the remains of his small coffee on his desk, took off his hat, and threw his overcoat on the back of his chair. He was wearing his ugly plaid shirt and his "classy" jeans today. His "classy" jeans were his dark wash skinny jeans that he felt made him look sleek and ready for action. He was obviously deluding himself.

He looked at the laptop on his desk and wondered if he should wake it up right away, or if he should wait a while. He decided that he would wait until the truck backing into the parking lot managed to dislodge itself from between the garbage dumpsters.

After watching the truck move back and forth for five minutes, Manual got bored and sat at his desk. There was no one in the office to disturb him, and any email he sent now would probably not be read for another hour. This gave him enough time to have a nap before he had to do any kind of work.

Manual's days always played out in similar ways, with small deviations here and there. He would come in early, before almost everyone else. He would stare out the window while finishing his (normally large) coffee. He would then answer emails and send emails. Then he would evaluate what he had to do for the day before taking a short nap. He would wake up just before 9am when the office started to fill up. Then he would go make himself a tea and talk to whomever was in the kitchen before going back to his office to pretend to work.

His job was low-stakes. He was important to the process, but not so important that he would be missed if he left for two hours in the middle of the day. If he was missing for longer, someone would probably notice and people would start to complain. By his own estimation, he'd have to be missing for more than two days for that to happen.

The important thing for Manual was for the day to go along almost exactly the same way as the day before. Organization was the key: the fewer steps left to chance, the fewer things could go wrong. Of course, there were always unexpected events, and even some days where things appeared to go wrong quasi-randomly, but in general, there was no event that could not be solved through careful planning and execution.

But then there was the coffee: he had somehow ordered the wrong size coffee this morning. This was operator error and this wasn't something you could plan for.