What I learned from a Unicorn

Our workplace has a Book Club and the pen to write your order on the form always went missing.

So one day I took action.

I kindly took in my plastic white unicorn head pen-holder and taped it to the sideboard and popped in a pen.

All went well for a couple of weeks.

After all I stuck a bright yellow Post-it Note in front of the Unicorn, reading “Please leave the Unicorn.”

Imagine my surprise when this week when going for my 8 am coffee, I was dismayed to see …. no Unicorn! Never mind that the Note was still there.

Filled with outrage at the thought of someone helping themselves to it, I dashed to my desk and wrote the following note on a Post-it.

“To whoever took the unicorn. Please return it. Stealing is a crime.”

I sticky-taped the new message above the Note “Please leave the Unicorn.”

The next day, a Post-it Note appeared, stuck over my latest Note.

“My 7 year old daughter really likes unicorns.”

The cheek, I fumed, I’ll show them, and this led to the following dialogue, by Post-it Notes.

Me: Why not get your own unicorn, this one was for us!

Thief: My pay grade was put down recently.

Me: You should have just asked & I could have got your daughter a unicorn

Thief: It was easier this way

Me: You dirty rotten scoundrel

Thief: Who me? No I wanted a Frozen light but couldn’t afford it. By the way I saw someone with a large book from the Book Club. They knocked your unicorn pen holder off the back of the cupboard.

Here are the facts: I did put a Unicorn pen holder on the cupboard and it went missing.

I wrote a Post-it Note “To whoever took the unicorn. Please return it” and considered putting it where the Unicorn had been.

I let out some steam that day, while my imagination filled in gaps, like someone in the building over the weekend or in before 8.00 am must have taken the pen holder.

To further assuage my hurt feelings that neither my good intentions to help the Book Club or the Unicorn had been respected, at home I imagined the dialogue above.

Creativity is a great outlet to let off some steam!

When I went to work the next day, I was thinking sadly “Goodbye Unicorn, I hope where-ever you are, you are well.”

It turns out it was just a couple of feet away from where it normally resided.

Brooding while getting my 8.00 am coffee, I said to a work colleague dolefully “Somebody has stolen the Unicorn pen holder.”

“Oh no” she rejoined, “Maggie accidentally knocked it off the cupboard with a huge book. She said she’ll get it back but we have to work out how to move the cupboard first.”

I looked at her disbelievingly for a moment, then hauled away the recycling bin that was next to the cupboard and peered behind.

It was there, out of arm’s reach, a long distance away, but in one piece and intact!

A happy and sheepish Celine smiled at her colleague, and thanked her.

I then began trying to work out how to move the cupboard which was chock full of crockery.

The next day while staring at the cupboard and thinking that I might have to take everything out of it, I explained the loss of the Unicorn to another work colleague.

Amazingly, she had the resolve to rescue it immediately.

I don’t know what she used, maybe a roll of cling wrap. Muttering “this won’t be long enough” she used it as a rake.

Lo and behold, what was not stolen, was recovered.

The pen holder was restored to its usual place.

That week I learned a valuable lesson, which was “Don’t jump to conclusions, self-restraint is the mother of good outcomes.”

I already knew this when the Unicorn went missing, but it was easy and routine for me to think that it had been stolen.

So if your Unicorn goes missing, even if you’re at work on auto-pilot, take a step back and give yourself time to think about and find the possibilities.