Coffee-machine small talk about a much-delayed office relocation

Two colleagues from different departments, acquainted only from a single company event some months back, bump into each other at the coffee machine. While their cups fill, they exchange updates on a long-postponed office relocation and discover that neither department has been given any firm information.

1. A: Oh, hello - it's Priya, isn't it? We met at the away day in March.
2. B: That's right, yeah. And you're... don't tell me. Marcus? Something in finance?
3. A: Marcus, yeah - well remembered. How are things up on the fourth floor?
4. B: Honestly? Chaotic. We're completely snowed under with the year-end reporting, and half the team's on leave.
5. A: I did hear that. Is your move still happening in October, or...?
6. B: That's the thing - it's all up in the air at the moment. They keep promising we'll know by Friday, and then Friday comes and goes.
7. A: Same story on our floor. We were told the seating plan was final, and last week they redrew the whole thing.
8. B: So how are you handling it? Are you booking desks ahead, or...
9. A: We've stopped planning altogether, honestly. We're just playing it by ear until someone tells us otherwise.
10. B: Probably the sensible option. Right, I'd better run - mine's already going cold.
11. A: Yeah, me too. Nice to put a face to the name properly, anyway.
12. B: You too. And if you hear a date before we do, let me know, will you?

Three fixed expressions carry this conversation, all of them common in professional small talk. In line 4 the second speaker describes an overload of work through a weather image; in line 6 she presents an unresolved decision as if it were suspended somewhere overhead. In line 9 the first speaker uses a phrase borrowed from musicians that means improvising rather than working to a schedule - its closing word refers to a part of the body, and learners regularly swap it for a similar-sounding word to do with time. All three are neutral in register: safe in the office, natural in speech.

1. With no firm date for the move, speaker A's team have given up planning - they are just playing it by ___.