When The Keys Hit The Fan

One day, our manager was in and out of a horrible mood for almost our entire shift. Things really hit the fan at around 12:00 pm when she burst from her private office into our general work area like a tornado.

Manager: “I don’t know what you people are trying to pull, but today is not the day to mess with me!”

My coworkers and I looked at each other curiously. It had been a rather lazy day apart from a minor incident with our Xerox machine, which was currently being serviced.

Coworker #1: “What are you talking about?”

Manager: “I have been looking for my g**d*** keys for forty-five minutes! I know one of you has them!”

Coworker #2: “None of us went into your office.”

Manager: “Yeah, right, like I believe that. I know I didn’t misplace them, and I am not in the mood for your office games today!”

Me: “Why would we take your keys as a prank?”

Manager: “I don’t know! Why do you guys do anything as a prank?!”

Me: “Fair.”

Manager: “So, give them up! We are not doing this today!”

None of us moved; obviously, none of us had them.

Manager: “Well?!”

Coworker #3: “No, really, none of us have your keys.”

Coworker #2: “As I said, none of us went into your office.”

Coworker #1: “They probably fell down.”

This conversation bounced back and forth with both our manager and my coworkers getting exceedingly more irritated at each other. By the end of the day, her keys had still not been found, and despite us staying for an additional two hours past our shifts to help her look — after we had convinced her we had nothing to do with it and she apologized for her behavior — we were not successful in locating them.

The result of this was that we had to call the owner of the company, who was then forced to pay to rekey every internal and external door for our structure. Our manager was saved by her tenure but still received a massive write-up on her employee file for “negligent handling of company property resulting in a steep monetary loss.” This made her the first person in company history to receive that write-up without crashing a company car.

The days went on, the weeks passed, and the seasons changed, and then one day, a visitor arrived. He was there to repair our manager’s typewriter which was still used on a very occasional basis to create mailing envelopes.

Allegedly, what had happened was that our manager had placed her keys inside of the typewriter while replacing the white-out ribbon and, distracted by a phone call, closed the machine back up without grabbing them. Of course, she didn’t notice this until she needed to use the typewriter again, and it was jammed due to the keyring inside of it, prompting her to call for repair.

Maybe we should stick to handwriting our envelopes.