Typical Day
The clock strikes 5:00AM—and in Horace's house that's an actual clock, not an iPhone alarm. He grabs it from the bedside table and switches it off. The bells stop ringing, but the second hand never stops ticking. As a trained, professional horologist, Horace wouldn't have it any other way.
Not that Horace would ever use the word horologist. Most of his friends have no idea what that word means, and using it at parties usually just elicits a lot of eye-rolling. When he was younger he used to try to educate the masses, but now he takes the easy way out. He avoids the whole "what do I call you" problem by responding with a simple "I fix clocks and watches." Ninety-five percent of the time, it works every time.
Of course, Horace isn't really thinking about any of that right now. It's 6:00AM, and having just worked out, he's trying to figure out whether to have granola or eggs for breakfast.
By 7:00AM, Horace is in his office behind his storefront workshop. His desk is a disorganized mess of papers on top of papers, but it works for him. He looks over his desktop calendar—which is actually a calendar on his desk, not an app—to see who's coming in for repair pickups today. Horace likes to do things the old-fashioned way. Considering his line of work, this works out nicely.
At 8:30AM, Horace opens up shop. Since he's not expecting his first pickup for a few hours and his store isn't exactly a big window shopping destination, he stays in the back working on repairs. At 9:45AM, the bell on the front door, which lets him know someone has opened the front door, chimes…to let him know someone has opened the front door.
It turns out it's just the mail carrier, Ted. Horace gives him the usual "good morning" and he's gone a moment later. One day Horace will get him to stay and check out a nice Rolex, although who knows if he'd be able to afford it on a postal worker's salary.
At 11:35AM, the bell chimes for the second time today. "Only five minutes late," Horace thinks to himself, as he smiles and grabs the repaired watch bracelet from the cabinet. Walking to the front, he greet Gladys, who today is dressed in a pink track suit and her typical prescription sunglasses.
At eighty-seven years young, Horace is just happy she still wants to come down to the store. He's been repairing time pieces for her since he left the training program way back, and has been offering to make free house calls for her for years. Utter nonsense, she replies, every time he suggests the idea (Gladys is feisty like that). As long as she can still get down to the store, she'll continue to bring the pieces in herself.
At lunchtime, Horace doesn't close up shop—he wouldn't want to drive away that one person who might come in on their own break. Instead, he sits in the back at 1:00PM with his egg salad sandwich, flipping through a catalog of the latest in high-fashion watch design from Switzerland, France, and the U.S.
Much like fantasy footballers watch SportsCenter or celebrity lovers read Us Weekly, Horace keeps up on the latest technologies and fashions in the business.
Horace spends his afternoon using a dozen tools that would make even ants feel like giants, finishing the last repair of the day at about 5:00PM. At 5:10PM, he shutters up the store. Some days he'll stay open later, especially if he needs to schedule a late pickup or drop-off, but today he's ready to head home.
He turns his attention to a hotly contested mental debate: what to cook for dinner tonight. Realizing he really doesn't want to cook, he decides to hit the nearest drive-thru instead.
After sitting hunched over a desk all day working with itty bitty pieces of metal, the last thing he wants to do is slave away over an open flame. He's glad to pay nine-dollars-plus-tax to make somebody else do it.
Just like clockwork, Horace is brushed, undressed, and in bed by 10:00PM, after a few hours of television and a nice talk with his sister at 8:25PM. He could stay up a little later and catch up on some reading, but he finds the extra sleep keeps him sharp for the rest of the day's work. That's exactly how he likes it.