Have you ever looked at a mug and wondered where it came from, where all of them come from? I’m staring into a bone-white cabinet in the kitchenette of this pale-grey office, and all I can think about is this mug. Not the accounts review, not the email Jane wants me to read, not the key-performance-indicator review this afternoon, not the corporate Christmas party nobody fucking wants. Where do the mugs come from? Not just this one, all of them, there are twenty or so here. Someone must make them, hands with a job, paid shit probably, I’m assuming in a developing country; we take advantage of them. Who else has held this mug? Fingerprints are washed off it every day leaving no trace. Perhaps staring into this mug long enough will make Jane go away? I’ve not seen her this angry before, although I can barely see her now, she’s a smudge in my cup-focused peripheral. What if this mug has been handled by hundreds of people only to find its way into Jane’s face? I drop the mug. It falls like any mug should, tumbles a bit, making sure the impact will snap the handle off. I think Jane stopped; I’m unsure, the finality of the mug is more important. Goodbye mug. It seems wasteful now, I realise, to have let it fall; after travelling farther than I ever have, it’s had more physical human contact than I ever will. I find myself envying it.