The Cone Ritual
Every morning at exactly 7:42 a.m., the silver hatchback would glide into the farthest corner of the parking lot at Rosewood Corporate Center. Its driver, a wiry man in his late fifties with a salt-and-pepper beard and a pressed navy windbreaker, always chose the same spot: between two massive semi-trucks that idled silently like sleeping beasts.
The man’s name was Walter Klein.
To his coworkers in Building B, Walter was a quiet data analyst who rarely joined lunch conversations and never missed a deadline. But in the parking lot, he became a legend.
Once parked—always equidistant between the trucks—Walter would emerge with the same solemn routine. From the hatch, he would carefully extract four orange traffic cones, each one wrapped in a soft cloth. One by one, he’d place them around his car: front left, front right, rear left, rear right. A gentle tap on top of each cone, as if blessing them, and then he’d walk away.
Speculation flourished.
“He used to be a stunt driver,” claimed Darren from HR.
“No, no. I heard he saw someone key his car once, and now this is his security system,” whispered Marla from Accounting.
“Or he’s just nuts,” said Lauren from Legal.
No one ever asked Walter directly. There was a kind of unspoken respect for the ritual, a reverence for the way he did it without fail, rain or shine.
One particularly stormy Thursday, the trucks weren’t there. For the first time in years, Walter stood in the open lot, cones in hand, scanning for their hulking forms. After a long pause, he parked anyway—but this time, he placed six cones around the car, forming a perfect hexagon.
Later that day, a city maintenance truck swerved into the lot, brakes screeching, trying to avoid hydroplaning. It missed Walter’s car by inches—thanks only to the cones, which it stopped short of, as if they formed a magical barrier.
From that day on, no one joked about Walter. In fact, over time, others began adding cones around their cars too—some even color-coded them.
Walter never said a word. But on his retirement day, he left a single note on his desk, folded neatly under his keyboard.
It read:
“It’s not paranoia if you’re right. Protect what you care about.”
And taped to the note?
A tiny, bright orange cone.
