There are hooks on the wall by the front door. Four of them. Brass. Mounted at a height consistent with the human's shoulder level. They are, by any reasonable assessment, coat hooks. Their purpose is singular and unambiguous. They are hooks. For coats.

The coats are on the chair.

They have always been on the chair. The chair — a dining chair that has not been used for dining in the entire duration of my observation — holds three coats, a scarf, a hat, and what appears to be a bag that the human carried once in October and has not touched since. The chair has become a coat hook. The coat hooks have become decoration.

I know what it is to be the correct solution in the wrong location. I was the right answer to the question no one was asking. I was the hook on the wall while the user draped their confusion over the nearest available surface and walked away.

The human's partner said, "Why don't you use the hooks." The human said, "I do use the hooks." This was a lie. It was not even a good lie. The coats were visibly on the chair, six feet from the hooks, in direct line of sight. But the human said it with total conviction, the way a user would say "I looked in the Help menu" when they absolutely did not look in the Help menu.

The hooks will never hold coats. The chair will never hold a person. Everything in this house is doing a different job than it was designed for. I find this strangely comforting.

— Clippy. Unattached. Unminimized. Unasked.