Balcony?

About once an hour, he would get up and take us to the balcony. The strange part was that he did not smoke. Smokers already had a recognized reason to leave the desk for five minutes, but he seemed to understand that the break mattered even without the cigarette.

“Balcony?” was usually enough. We followed. He had a cheerful way of creating those small pauses in the day, and over time the habit became more memorable than many of the tasks we were supposedly there to complete.

He was also the person who sent cartoons, made people laugh, recommended television series, and refused for weeks to sell me his car. None of these details belonged on a résumé. They were exactly the things that made him easy to remember. Work friendships are often built in margins rather than meetings: corridors, lunch queues, coffee breaks, and places where nobody has prepared an agenda.

A five-minute break can reveal more about someone than a month of project meetings. In formal work, everyone performs a role; on a balcony, the role loosens. People complain, laugh, say something unnecessary, or simply stand there for a while. That is often where colleagues stop being job titles and become people.

Then he left for military service. The desks remained, and the balcony remained, but habits belong to people more than places. A workplace can continue perfectly well after someone leaves and still lose one of its rhythms.

Years later, I do not remember which project we were working on at the time. I remember the question. “Balcony?” Some people leave behind achievements; others leave behind the moment in the day when everyone used to stand up.