I feel called out. At the moment this Atlantic piece popped into my email, I was sipping away on a chai latte, having exhausted my first morning office coffee (to the left of my phone) with my trusty water bottle on standby (to the right of my phone). I actually keep three reusable coffee mugs at my desk in case, you know, two of them spontaneously combust. Pop culture science says that for office desks, that’s probably not too coincidental: According Kurt Carlson, a marketing researcher at the College of William & Mary, the three beverages theory might be a symptom of our preference to pay attention to patterns of three. In this case, I blame growing up with my mom, who had a minimum cup-holder accessibility requirement when she went car-shopping.