The horary case of the missing elf.

 At my real world job, my manager celebrates the holidays by playing a game with her staff. She has a stuffed elf (one of those elf on a shelf dolls) that she hides somewhere in the work space. The first employee to find it wins the game. 

This year, an ambitious new employee took it upon themselves to hide the elf. Without the manager's permission. And without telling her where it was hidden. For three days, everyone was in an uproar turning the place inside out trying to find the thing. After that, my manager was having a complete meltdown because it turned out that the stuffed elf had personal meaning for her. It was a gift from an employee who would later die because of health issues.

When it was finally discovered who hid the elf, it was also realized that the same employee wasn't due back to work for another three days. We offered to call but she refused to bother employees on their day off for something like this (when, in her mind, she shouldn't have been irresponsible enough to bring personal belongings to work like this for games, in the first place - ergo, she deserved whatever fate befell her elf.) There was no way for us to get the employee's number without her finding out and no one wanted to get into trouble with the boss by invading an employee's privacy or going against her specific instructions.

Then, it dawned on me. 'Duh! You're an astrologer, dumbass. Find it!'

You never feel as stupid as you do in these moments. Thanks to the wonders of the internet and cell phones, I pulled up a basic chart to see if I could interpret the chart to find anything useful.

Can be found easily (my co-workers searching all last week would disagree). East. Waist height. Behind or under something. And sports? Something associated with sports? Near a thru-way or door way but not immediately next to it. And had to be found in the next 2 days or it would be gone forever.

I pulled a co-worker aside, swore her to secrecy and then told her the information I got and how I got it. I told her to concentrate her search in that area.

It was found between barrels of cheese balls in a case, waist height, near a doorway, East side of store.

Apparently, some customers by this stuff by the case load and it could have easily disappeared forever by accidentally going home in its original case with a customer or in the hands of a child, both resulting the elf ending up in the garbage and not back in my manager's hands.

My co-worker brought the elf to my manager and received a hero's welcome. She told my manager, I kept getting pulled back to this area. It must have been calling me!

I have to admit I was a little jealous at the lack of recognition for this but I also specifically asked her to keep this a secret and she kept her word to me.

Later I said, "I don't get the sports connection though. Did you see anything sports related around there?"

Her: "Duh! Snowballs!"

Me: "Huh?"

Her: "Snowballs? Sports? Winter?"

Me: (rolling eyes feeling stupid for missing the obvious the second time that day)

Astrology. There's always a comedian somewhere. :-)