Missing: $5,000 check

It was late at work last week when a co-worker stopped at my work cubicle. She had a check to be deposited and asked if I could hold it in my desk till the next day--then hand it over to my boss. He prepares the deposits for stray checks we occasionally get in the mail.

She explained that she didn't want to be responsible for holding the check herself since it was written for over $5,000. No fear. Big Dave is here. I took the check and opened my top desk drawer when I noticed the woman still standing there. Better wait, I thought to myself. I put the check aside.

The next morning I was plugging away at my desk, my supervisor sitting at the cubicle across from me, when something I heard jogged my memory. Whoa, that check! I sometimes forget at my age, you know. So I opened the drawer where I thought I had put it.

It wasn't there.

I tried to recall exactly what I had done after the woman had stopped at my desk. But I couldn't recall. Heck, if Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says under oath 71 times that he can't recall what he did as attorney general, surely I can be forgiven for a memory gap of my own.

One by one, I went through every drawer in my desk, even drawers I hadn't used in years. I scoured in-baskets, inspected my pile of recycled papers, looked in the trash, sorted through every last piece of paper sitting on my desk. Zero, nada, zilch.

My main job responsibility is making sure that various sites underneath our administrative umbrella reconcile their own cash collections to the penny. And they hear from me if they don't. So what does it look like for me to suddenly lose a $5,000 check? Not good. I'm beginning to panic. My hands are getting clammy. I feel a lump in my throat.

In a gesture of desperation, I decided to go to the file room to pull a couple files I had on my desk the previous afternoon. It's a long shot, but maybe I had absent-mindedly put the check inside with the file contents. Before leaving, I decided to tell the boss. Time to confess.

"So you're missing a check, huh," he said, flashing me a broad grin.

Wait a minute, stop the presses. I smell a rotten tomato here. Yes, it was time for true confessions. But it was my supervisor who had to 'fess up . . . to taking the check out of my desk before I had arrived at work, and forgetting to tell ME about it. The woman who had given me the check had e-mailed my boss telling him I had it.

"Did I have your blood pressure shooting up there?" he teased.

D'YA THINK??? I didn't even know he had permission to rummage through my desk, which is open since the lock has been broken a while. So I said, "I owe you one." He disagreed, saying he had owed ME, since I often berate his allegiance to Michigan State Spartan sports teams.

No soap! We work in Ann Arbor, home of the University of Michigan Wolverines. Belittling Spartan cheerleaders is not only the norm, it's expected behavior.

So if anyone knows of a good prank I can pull on the boss, let me know. Be daring. I'm close enough to retirement.