The Scam

It's Saturday night and I'm scheduled to work until eleven pm. There are three of us working and things were pretty well under control. At nine pm I was ready to go. I played out a scheme in my head to get myself out and leaving my coworkers to finish my work.

At 9:15 I approached Sara. "You want to leave early tonight," I asked. She confirmed with her best "duh" voice. Our third coworker, Jeff, was standing there. I repeated my question to him. He of course was interested in my offer.

"Let's draw straws for this," I told them both. I explained we'd draw and the winner could go home. Sara suddenly became uncomfortable with leaving early and said she wasn't going to play. She'd rather work. My odds of going home early just increased by nearly twenty percent!

Jeff and I stood there and he asked if I was serious about this. Was he nervous as well? I outrank Jeff in seniority and rank, but was trying to make this fair instead of just leaving. I really wanted to go home, but I don't need to burn any bridges at work.

I pulled a quarter out and flipped it into the air. "Tails," Jeff called. The quarter hit the ground and rolled away from us. When we finally found it, it was tails side up. I said some curse words in my head, but accepted my loss.

Jeff again questioned if I was serious. "Of course," I told him. I could tell he was nervous. "If you don't leave, then I am."

He said he was going to stick around for ten minutes to finish what he was working on. I told him to have a good night and went into the office. About five minutes later, I came out to see Jeff talking to Sara. He came up and asked a third time if I was ok with him leaving. I told him he won the deal, he should leave. Then he asked, "You have a pretty far drive home, don't ya?"
I told him I did. He then told me to go ahead and leave and he would get his another day.

Although my plan almost backfired on me, I walked to the car with a huge smile. I was leaving work about an hour and a half early on a Saturday night. My coworkers can't hold it against me because I offered them an equal shot at it and they both GAVE it to me. They felt GOOD about me leaving! HA!