By 9:14 each morning it has already been drained and refilled twice, usually by whoever arrived early enough to feel responsible and not early enough to feel exploited. This is the pot's whole social contract: someone pours the last cup, and in pouring it, inherits the obligation to make more. Few appliances carry this much unspoken employment law.
Its carafe bears a permanent brown ring at the halfway mark, a tide line left by a hundred half-finished pots gone bitter on the burner. The pot does not care. It holds ninety-six ounces and asks only that the filter be replaced before the grounds overflow onto the counter, an instruction followed perhaps one time in four. Field observation suggests its true function is less caffeination than congregation, three minutes standing near the machine constitutes the only unscheduled meeting most departments hold all week. Sales reps confess layoffs here. Interns learn who actually runs things.
By late afternoon the coffee has reduced itself to something closer to tar, and someone will drink it anyway, out of habit or spite. The pot keeps producing regardless of what's asked of it, indifferent to whether anyone's grateful, which might be the closest thing this building has to grace.