BURNLEY — By 9:10am at the national support centre of the country's most prolific hardware chain, every staff member required to be physically present has logged in, made themselves visible to their manager, and arrived at the kitchenette at what appears to be the exact same moment, creating a bottleneck that several attendees later described as "not ideal" while doing nothing to resolve it.
The automatic espresso machine, capable of producing one coffee at a time, found itself the focal point of a queue that curved past the fridge, looped around a standing employee attempting to fill a water bottle, and drifted past a large table with seating for ten that nobody was using.
"I've been waiting long enough that I've forgotten what coffee I'm going to make," said one staff member, still holding their reusable cup with the practiced patience of someone who has accepted this is simply how the morning goes now. "I think it was a flat white. It might be a long black by the time I get there."
Further along the queue, another staff member reconsidered their order entirely. "I was going to do a mocha, but I don't want to be the person who has to swap the milk over," they said, eyeing the machine warily. "So, black coffee now. Which is fine. I don't really like coffee, if I'm honest. I have it milky so the taste isn't so bad. I don't know what I'm even doing here."
Those feeling flush, or simply unwilling to wait, were seen abandoning the kitchenette altogether in favour of the café queue one level below.
Most people who stayed appeared to exist somewhere between patience and impatience, caught between an unfulfilled caffeine addiction and the looming knowledge that last week's time tracking, due that morning, had not in fact been done on Friday as intended.
Nobody in the queue voiced it directly, but the general understanding remained that working from home would have avoided this situation entirely.
By lunchtime, the congestion had simply relocated. The same faces were spotted in the cafeteria, this time haggling quietly over a spare chair they could drag across to sit with their team.