How the office handled the rain

The rain started on a Tuesday. By Thursday the office had developed coping mechanisms.

Mira brought her umbrella indoors and propped it against the radiator, where it dripped a slow, patient circle that the head of operations stepped around the way you step around a sleeping dog. Sebastian discovered that the third-floor coffee machine made better coffee when the air was damp and refused to discuss this finding with anyone who hadn't tried it. The receptionist, whose name was Elena and who had been threatening to leave the company for three years, bought a small ceramic frog from a market stall and placed it on her desk facing the window. When asked, she said the frog was in charge of the rain now. Nobody contradicted her. By Friday two more frogs had appeared.

On the second Tuesday of the rain, the building manager attempted to mop the lobby. The mop bucket overflowed. He stood in the small flood he had caused and watched, with the dignified resignation of a man who had reached the end of a particular kind of optimism, as the lobby became, for an afternoon, a shallow pond.

The frogs were transferred down at four-thirty. They presided.

The rain stopped on a Sunday, when nobody was there to see it.

On Monday the frogs went back to their desks, except for one, who stayed in the lobby and who was, by general unspoken agreement, promoted.