It's there, I promise!

Part of the benefits I get with this job is that I am allow to take a company car home at the end of the day and on the weekends. It makes my life leaps easier. There are 3 of us in the office with this right and there are 4 cars. Work matters of course always take priority.

The last few weeks have been a little frustrating in terms of the car. A 4th car is out of comission until a part is shipped in from Japan and for a while, a 3rd car was in the shop. As the lowest person on the totem pole, I had to go without. This was okay for a while, because I just walked everywhere, getting a little bit of exercise in. The 3rd car came back after a week, so it wasn't too bad.

On Thursday the car I usually drive had to go up to the Haitian border for some project monitoring but was supposed to come back Friday afternoon. After waiting patiently until 6 pm, I finally started to ask around about the car. Sure enough, the manager who took the car was "not in good health" and "unable to drive back to Santo Domingo." The facts that the manager is from the town where the monitoring took place, has family and friends there and it was a Friday night, perfect time for knocking back a Presidente or two, are purely coincidential. Since I am going up to see Carnaval with a friend today (Saturday), he promised to have the car back by 9 am.

This morning before coming over to the office I called my coworker to make sure that he had come back and left the key on top of the secretary's desk, as we planned. He assured me that all had gone according to plan. I walked to the office (about 45 mins) and sure enough, couldn't see the key anywhere.

I called my coworker again to make sure that I wasn't going crazy. "Oh no, it's there. I put it right on the secretary's desk." I hung up and started looking again. No luck. I called him again. "Hmm, maybe I accidentally left it on my desk." So I poured through his office. Nothing. Finally, he admits, "Oh, I actually still have the key. It's in my own car."

So although he knew perfectly well that he hadn't put the key on the secretary's desk, he let me do all that work, pretending that he had. Sigh.