Exercise and Work Place Moral Boosters

Apparently, all it takes to get me to exercise is tiny worthless trinkets. Not every shiny things. I’m like a mini 3D print niffler. What am I talking about? These:

That’s the top of my white board at work. Those little figures are printed by people and hid around the building. It’s like a scavenger hunt.

I first found out about this with the red gnome. One appeared around Christmas on the filing cabinets at the end of my cube row. I left him there for everyone to enjoy. A cute easter egg. In fact, when I showed him to someone in my row, they wanted him, and I said no. He was for all of us. Then asshole J took him a few days later. I was pissed and he said they were for taking. He was collecting all the Christmas ones and hanging them from dental floss in his cube. I complained about this to one of the (unbeknownst to me at the time) printers and they were like “yeah, he’s right.”

Apparently, it started with the squirrels. That’s a black one all the way to the left. I didn’t find that one, it was given to me by someone who found it and hadn’t known what it was for. I do remember seeing “I” at work searching all the cubes and she told me she was looking for squirrels, but I didn’t know what she was talking about. So after the red gnome, she explained that it was the same thing. Someone was printing Christmas gnomes and hiding them for people to find.

Then other Christmas ones started showing up. Polar bears, snowmen, sleds. I started taking the stairs up to my third floor cube instead of the elevator so I could look in the stairwells. I started taking a daily walk around the building scavenging. That’s how one of my friends gave me the squirrel. I explained what I was doing and he was like “oh is that what these are?” And he let me have it.

I managed to find all of the Christmas collection except for the red gnome (asshole gave me his after Christmas) and the melting snowman. Then presents and champagne bottles appeared for New Years. I finally found the black champagne bottle on Friday! He’s not up there yet in the picture.

For Valentines there have been articulated cats in white and silver, hearts in pink and red, as well as spiders and otters. I have not found a pink heart or a silver cat (my silver cat came from an IT guy who I say hello to every day on my walk about hunts). I chose the otters. By this time, I know the main printer and hider. As far as I know, I is the only one doing it. We were chatting and she was talking about how it takes a lot of time and also it’s filament she isn’t making money on. So I was like fuck, I’ll give you money. This is the only thing that gets me to exercise.

So we made a deal that I would donate as long as she kept doing it and kept one of each for me if I didn’t find one by that holiday. And she let me pick a Valentines one. I picked the otters! I also helped her separate and clean up the otters and am helping her hide them. The spider is disturbing and yet freakishly cute somehow? Look at him on my work plant’s grow light:

His eyes and butt dots are red hearts. And he’s articulated in the middle.

Some people are hoarding piles of them, but I just want one of each. So I don’t pick up duplicates. Except for the white cat because I wanted to trade him for a silver — plus… CATS. Oh and there are still presents hiding around (she printed a ton of those) so I grabbed another to bookend Christmas. And the otters I didn’t find. Though, I have spotted a few she has hidden in the last week. I took two while we were prepping them so they could be little love otters before we started hiding those. I have a whole baggy at my desk to spread around the building this week. They’re so fucking adorable.

So there you go. Exercise and work place moral booster in one. I’ll throw the occasional $20 in for that. This is way better than stupid org days.