Colombo lives in a battered but lively palace with a railing; he has four neighbors: a woman who is perpetually pregnant, the members of the theater cooperative "Quelli di Grock", a girl always intent on carrying heaps of rags, and a ramshackle dance school attended by a student he is in love with, but she won't even look at him.

He is, in his own way, a genius of electronics and automation (he has built a contraption that prepares his breakfast and brings it to him in bed, and which hands him his clothes for the day), however his job is that of a waiter at a remote drinks kiosk at the top of Montagnetta di San Siro.

Colombo finds himself having to run across Milan carrying the glass of water on a tray, which during the journey suffers a sequence of ridiculous accidents: it is first poured into the helmet of a traffic cop, then some painters accidentally dip the brushes in it, it is soiled by the unloading of a truck, pigeons eat birdseed in it and finally an insect falls into it.

His life, however, does not improve much: the impresario, strict and grim, comes to the courtyard to gather the actors and leave for a show but, not seeing them arrive, goes up to the messy apartment where they sleep and wakes them up with a trumpet; they rush to wash up the dishes, throwing them from one part of the kitchen to the other in a sort of hilarious assembly line, and are finally loaded badly into the van.

The spectators, at first only perplexed by the insipid staging, then take up shovels and pitchforks and force the actors to a long and ruinous escape on foot.