Although I suspect that’s what they all say.

I work one night every two weeks. It’s something different, the woman I work with is “like-minded,” it’s all good.

One night quite a while back, she went out to check the garbage cans on the drive. I wasn’t paying much attention; there’s a possibility I was doing something that I actually get paid to do. After she came back in, she said she had a present for me, and asked me to guess what it was, and then said I would never guess and held out her hand. In it there was a little plastic goat that she’d found on top of the garbage can. We did what any respectable person would do. We adopted it.

So, everybody knew about the goat. It traveled from one register to another, spent some time on the lottery machine, maybe even stood on the counter behind the registers. And then one day it was gone.

After searching for a few days, I put up a note that said, “Who’s got my goat?” I came back the next day and the note was gone. I put up another one, and my like-minded friend crossed out “my,” and replaced it with “our.” Still no answer.

Our protege finally told us that the manager (poor thing - having to manage a wayward bunch like us) had gotten tired of people complaining about that goat, and had thrown it away.

I actually got angry.

So, I went to the local dollar store and bought a bag of little farmyard animals, and presented it to my friend in front of the manager. We plotted for weeks.

First it was fun with farm animal night, where those two hid a few around the store. Then April Fool’s day came, and we were working together. Something had to give.

I feel so guilty, having done this.

We cut off the horse’s head and put it in the drawer the manager counts in the morning, and we put the body in the pizza prep table.