[ Dramatis Personae: Programmer, IT Person, Client Relations. Not present: Second Programmer, Facilities. The setting is the Programmer's office, which is missing the desk, though the desk contents are on the ground, arranged as they might have been. ]
Programmer: This. This is what I was talking about. Do you understand this now?
IT: That's a problem.
Relations: Yeah, now I see it.
IT: Now we don't see it.
Relations: [ Laughing, sincerely, yet too much ] I love working here sometimes.
Programmer: I might love working here if I had the here to work that I had yesterday!
IT: I bet you weren't saying yesterday, ``I love working here because I know where my desk is.''
Relations: Is anything besides the desk missing?
Programmer: The desk is plenty!
Relations: I mean, who'd steal the desk instead of the computer or ... computer?
[ Second Programmer pops in. ]
Second: Hey, I heard you were in and --- what'd you do?
Programmer: Nothing! Every bit of doing here was beyond my control. Did you have something to do with this?
Second: Hey, no, not me. I'm not one to tell you how to do your job and if you want to do it with a deskless office that's none of my business.
Relations: It's not supposed to be a deskless office.
Second: Did you maybe break the desk?
Programmer: How could I break a desk?
IT: Plug it in backwards?
Relations: Who would take it?
IT: It's mice.
Programmer: Mice?
IT: [ While fiddling with a smart phone ] Yeah, packs of mice get in, figure they're going to build their own maze, make off with the whole desk. They strip it apart for the sheets of metal and the screws and build these puzzles.
Second: If you're going to eat in here you're going to get mice. That part checks out.
IT: They kidnap interns to run the mazes.
Programmer: I never eat at my desk.
Relations: That's just the frames, though. What would the mice do with the rest of the desk? Like, the top surface?
IT: Tiny soccer.
Programmer: I'm very clean, you know.
Second: Can you think what you did wrong? If you figure that out maybe they'll give you a desk back.
IT: Maybe a loaner desk, at least, until you show you can be trusted again.
Second: Could help if you send them an apology.
Programmer: I don't have anyone to apologize to, or for, or about, or ... or ...
IT: Or why?
Relations: Are you sure you didn't do anything that they're upset about?
Programmer: Other than the time I turned myself into a sixty-foot-tall giant and wound a rope around the desk to use as a giant bathroom keychain dongle? No, I can't think of a thing.
Second: If you're going to get sarcastic they're never going to give you your desk back.
Programmer: They who? Who they? Who is upset that I got upset about their stealing my desk?
IT: Do you actually need a desk?
Programmer: What?
IT: The network connectivity's still good. They didn't mess the cables up at all.
Programmer: So?
IT: Like you said how you could do your job from anywhere in the world. Couldn't you do it from four feet lower down too?
Second: Did you see anything on the facilities mailing list to warn you?
Programmer: I was hired back before we required ``advanced squatting and kneeling experience''.
Relations: I didn't know we had a facilities mailing list.
IT: Worst mistake we ever made.
Second: I don't know, but if anyone's on it then we have one.
Programmer: [ Mock hurt ] You don't have to get mean.
Relations: [ To Programmer ] Oh, that's silly but it makes sense.
[ The cross conversations collapse one another. ]
Programmer: What ... my desk. I want it back in my office.
Second: I'm not telling you what to do, but what you need to do ---
[ Facilities, lugging the desk, enters the office. ]
Programmer: My desk!
Facilities: Yup.
Programmer: Where was it?
Facilities: We took it.
Programmer: Why?
Facilities: Some reason. Probably it was scheduled for replacement.
Relations: Oh! Yeah, that schedule. The chairs, remember?
Programmer: [ Delighted ] Well, thank you. I just didn't know it was happening.
Facilities: Eh. It happened. You want help setting stuff back on?
Second: Bothered enough anyone else took the stuff off.
Programmer: I'll do it myself, thanks. [ Facilities exits before the 'thanks' is said; Programmer doesn't notice, too busy examining the desk. ]
IT: Once more, happiness.
Relations: They must have told you something about it.
[ Programmer growls and hits the desk with a fist. ]
Programmer: It's my old desk! This isn't a replacement.
Second: You should've apologized, then they would've given you a new one.
Trivia: The second-place city in the first and second rounds of balloting for the 2008 Olympics site was Toronto. Third place changed from Istanbul in the first round to Paris in the second. Source: Encyclopedia of the Modern Olympic Movement, Editors John E Findling, Kimberly D Pelle. (The book was published in 2004, before the Athens game even, so there's just projections of the future in it.)
Currently Reading: Roma Eterna, Robert Silverberg. This is kind of Silverberg's Foundation, events at important points in the history of a different Roman Empire while characters who haven't actually got very much to do with them set the background.