I have a lot of toys in my cubicle. I won’t lie to you. They’re everywhere. The thing is, I know where every single one of them is, and I know what I have. If you take something, I may not notice the very instant that it’s gone, but I will notice that it’s gone.

I was sitting today and noticed that one of my Tron figures is missing.

My first thought was, “Those scheming rat-bastard cleaning motherfuckers stole my figure!” Then I remembered that I have been monitoring them with my surveillance camera nightly and have not seen them take anything. They’d either have to be really slick or totally innocent.

Then I thought maybe it had fallen under my desk. My file cabinets are all on wheels (they slide under the desk; the desk is attached to the cube walls), so I slid the closest one out. It wasn’t there. It was then that I figured out where the figure went.

I sit next to a large, unopenable window. Now, keeping in mind that my desk attaches to the cube walls, obviously you realize it can’t attach to the window, right? Which means that there is a cube wall that runs at waist height along the window, just underneath it, that the desk can attach to. This further means that there is probably a one or two inch gap between the window/wall and the cube wall.

Guess where the figure went.

The problem now was how to get it out. I tried fishing it out with the retractable string attached to my work badge and a paperclip, but that wasn’t long enough to reach down there. I opened the Venetian blinds on the window and tried using the blind cord (the window’s probably six feet tall if it’s an inch), and that was long enough but made me realize that “fishing” wasn’t too accurate or easy.

The next train of thought led me to believe that if I could stick a pole or something down there with a hook on it, that would be good. Or the pole could have something sticky on the end that I could stick to the figure. Either way, right? Well, nothing around here is long enough, so I started taping pens together to make a stick with. After about ten pens, I found that it was going to take me a good 30 pens to reach where I needed to get to. So that plan went out the door.

The last thought I had was that I could remove the panel from the bottom of the cube wall that the power and phone cords run through and then I could reach under and get it… but I can’t figure out how to get the panel off without destroying it, so that didn’t work.

I’ve given up. On my limited resources, I can’t get it out of there without spending some serious time on it. I ended up contacting Dave the facilities guy (nice guy, too) to help me get it out. He’s coming up tomorrow morning.

What an ordeal.