The corner table at the back of the café rocked whenever anyone leaned an elbow on it.
Tap.
Tap.
A polite sound, like someone knocking from underneath.
The floor in that corner ran downhill toward the street. A building settling on one side will do that. A marble set down near the counter would think about it for a second and then roll out the door.
The table had been cut down once.
The evidence was still there. Four legs, four lengths, each with a pale ring where a saw had been. Someone had found the wobble, taken it for a long leg, and trimmed. The table rocked on a different corner. So they trimmed again. Every round left the table lower and the tap exactly where it started.
A regular went the other way. He dragged the table toward the window, dragged it back, and explained to the waiter that it was the floor, the building, the landlord. All of it was true. His tea still slopped into the saucer.
The floor did slope. The legs were uneven. Neither fact had ever stopped a cup from sliding.
The waiter had a coaster.
Each morning he folded it in half, then in half again, and knelt to slide it under the short leg. He pressed it in with a thumb. The table went quiet.
The floor kept its tilt. Tea in a glass still rode a little higher on the street side, so the regulars learned to pour a finger short.
The floor tilted long before anyone sat down. The coaster is up to whoever does.
Cardboard flattens. By the second week of rain it had gone soft and thin as a leaf, and the tapping came back. The waiter knelt again, drew out the old one, and folded a new one.
He did it without a glance at the floor.
That evening a man leaned an elbow on the corner table and reached for his tea. The table stayed still. Under the shortest leg, a folded coaster sat where a thumb had pressed it.
Same question of what is yours to carry runs through The Difference Between Responsibility And Control, where two people who look identical from the outside turn out to be doing very different work.
