“How round does the table need to be?” Orest asked.

Orest, the office administrator, took the name of tomorrow’s discussion literally and started looking for round furniture. He was in the meeting room, where he had only meant to set up places for six colleagues. His manager had announced a “roundtable,” asked him to arrange everything, and left for a call without hearing his question. A rectangular table stood in the middle of the room. Orest ran his palm along a sharp corner: fine for an ordinary meeting, apparently no longer suitable for tomorrow’s.

He found a round table for four in the office kitchen. Orest fetched a tape measure, measured the top, and decided six people would fit if they kept their laptops put away. He cleared the mugs, moved the chairs aside, and rolled the table on its edge toward the meeting room. He had to stop at the doorway: the top fitted through, but the legs caught on the frame. Orest turned the table sideways. Now the legs fitted, but the top hit the corridor wall—he had roughly half a palm’s width of clearance in either direction.

He took the table back to the kitchen, fetched a set of Allen keys, and unscrewed the legs. He carried the top in separately, holding it against his chest with both hands; the legs took another trip. He was on his knees tightening the final bolt when his manager returned from her call. She explained that a “roundtable” meant a discussion, and nobody cared what shape the furniture was. Orest gave the bolt another firm turn: leaving it loose just because the circumstances had changed would hardly be professional. Then he silently checked the table for wobbling.

Orest booked the ordinary rectangular table for the discussion and added a calendar note: “Discussion. Do not change the furniture.” Then he unscrewed the kitchen table’s legs again, carried everything back, and reassembled it during his lunch break. Tomorrow’s meeting was now fully arranged. When his colleagues returned from lunch, he finally sat down at the kitchen table with a sandwich. The Allen key lay beside him: he wasn’t putting it away before the first test under load.