Wednesdale II

Dale's mission to spend his entire career without doing any actual work saw him arrive outside the office an hour late. The day's weather was dreary; dark grey clouds spun around in the wind, which was turning the city's side streets into wind tunnels that blasted anyone who walked past them.

The cold was in Dale, who had forgone a jacket despite what the weather website's "feels like" condition had been showing earlier that morning. Instead he'd worn a thin, cotton knit over a polo shirt which gave the illusion of proper professionalism without needing to plug in an iron. The lobby's carbon footprint was high, and Dale smiled ironically as he left the street, passed through the sliding doors and the warmth sliced through his clothes.

The only other person waiting at the bay of lifts at the back of the lobby was a short, balding man wearing a faded brown jacket over an immaculately pressed shirt. The light above one set of doors lit up, and he held his hand across the sensor as Dale entered. Both men picked their floor numbers and the lift started. Dale aligned himself slightly in front and to the side of the man, like the first and second cars on the grid of a motor race. 'The key,' he thought, 'is getting pole position before the lift doors open, to avoid any awkward possibilities when two people try to leave at once. Like when...'

'Wednesday,' the man said to Dale.
'What?'
'Wednesday,' the man repeated as the lift climbed. 'Almost there.'
'To your floor?'
'To Friday.' He said. In his hand he held a large sized Morning Aroma branded coffee cup, and for a second they both gazed at it as if it was going to provide extra information.
'I know how you feel,' said Dale. A lie. He knew what he meant, but how could he empathise with a man who took his coffee break before ten.
The man looked at his watch, then at Dale's knit.
'Fashionably late,' he dead-panned as the doors opened to his floor.
Dale smiled as he watched him leave the lift.