Adrián works in a big office. He likes coffee very much. Every morning, he goes to the office kitchen to make coffee. One Tuesday morning, Adrián walks into the kitchen. He sees the coffee machine. It has a small red light on it. The red light means it is not ready. Adrián presses the button. Nothing happens. He presses it again. Nothing happens again. He looks at the machine. He reads a small note on the machine. The note says, 'Please wait. Machine is cleaning.' Adrián sighs. He does not want to wait. But he has no choice. He stands next to the machine and waits. A few minutes later, a woman walks into the kitchen. Her name is Sara. Sara also wants coffee.

She sees Adrián standing there. 'Is the machine broken?' she asks. 'No,' says Adrián. 'It is cleaning. We have to wait.' Sara looks at the machine. 'Oh,' she says. 'I see.' She stands next to Adrián. At first, they do not talk. It is a little quiet. Then Sara looks at Adrián. 'Do you work on the third floor?' she asks. 'Yes,' says Adrián. 'I work in the marketing team.' 'Really?' says Sara. 'I work in the finance team. We are on the second floor.' Adrián smiles. 'I did not know that,' he says. 'I always see you in the lift, but I never say hello.' Sara laughs a little. 'Me too,' she says. 'I am always in a hurry in the morning.' Adrián nods. 'Yes, me too,' he says. They keep talking.

Sara tells Adrián about her work. She writes reports about money. Adrián talks about his work too. He makes plans to help sell products. 'That sounds interesting,' says Sara. 'I never really know what the marketing team does.' 'It is very busy work,' says Adrián. 'But I enjoy it.' Then the coffee machine makes a loud sound. The red light turns green. The machine is ready now. 'Finally!' says Adrián. He laughs. Sara laughs too. They both make their coffee. 'It was nice to talk to you,' says Sara. 'Yes,' says Adrián. 'Maybe we can have coffee together again tomorrow.' 'I would like that,' says Sara. They walk out of the kitchen together. Adrián feels happy. He thinks the wait was not so bad after all. Sometimes a long wait brings a nice surprise.

Adrián was not a patient man, especially before his morning coffee. When he arrived at the office kitchen that Tuesday and found the coffee machine in the middle of its automatic cleaning cycle, he pressed the button twice out of habit, then stood back and frowned at the small red light blinking on the front panel. A printed note taped below the screen read, 'Cleaning in progress. Please allow ten minutes.' He exhaled slowly, crossed his arms, and leaned against the counter. He had a nine o'clock meeting to prepare for, and the last thing he wanted was to spend the next ten minutes staring at a machine. Still, the kitchen smelled of warm coffee from an earlier brew, and there was something almost peaceful about the quiet hum of the building waking up around him. He had been waiting for about three minutes when a colleague he vaguely recognized walked in. Her name, he would soon learn, was Sara, and she worked in the finance team on the floor below.

She glanced at the machine, noticed the red light, and turned to Adrián with a look of mild frustration. 'Don't tell me it's out of order,' she said. 'Not cleaning again?' Adrián shook his head and smiled. 'Just cleaning, unfortunately. About seven more minutes, I think.' Sara gave a short laugh and leaned against the counter beside him. What followed surprised them both. Within a few minutes, a brief, polite exchange about the machine had grown into a genuine conversation. Sara explained that her team had been analyzing the company's spending patterns for the past month, and Adrián found himself genuinely interested, asking questions he had never thought to ask before.

Adrián told her about the product campaign his team had been developing, and Sara admitted that she had always been curious about how marketing decisions were actually made. 'We see the numbers,' she said, 'but we rarely understand the thinking behind them.' Adrián nodded, realizing that he had never considered how his work looked from another team's perspective. By the time the machine let out a soft chime and the light turned green, neither of them was in a particular rush to stop talking. They made their coffees slowly, still mid-conversation, and walked back towards the lift together. 'We should do this again,' said Sara, 'without waiting for the machine to break down, ideally.' Adrián laughed. 'I'll look forward to it,' he said. He returned to his desk feeling more prepared for his meeting than any amount of coffee could have made him, simply because he had finally spoken to someone who saw his work from a completely different angle.