The Treasure Map Story

Day 956, 18:27 • Published in Ireland Ireland • by John Gormley

Today started out as a very normal day, nothing to suggest anything unusual would happen.
I went to work as normal in the Irish State Gifts job I had found for myself a few weeks ago. If you thought working in the public sector was easy, think again. I slave away each day churning out 25 or 26 gifts for the measly wage of 10 IEP! And my boss, Minister Paschoall, is a real slave-driver! 😉

In the afternoon, I finally finished up at work and I was about to head over to the Training Ground to meet up with my training instructor Lana Hctibamai when I was confronted by a small, grey-haired man with a scroll of paper in his left hand and a medal in his right hand. He introduced himself as the new HR manager and, though strangely he wouldn't give me his real name, he told me I should call him Almighty Admin, or AA for short, because that's what everybody calls him.

AA was there to inform me that I had worked 30 days in a row:
"You are known as a Hard Worker now and here is your medal," AA said, before pinning the medal next to an array of medals on my work jacket.
"Looks well with my my other ten HW medals,"I remarked. "When can I collect my reward of 5 pieces of gold?"
"Oh, actually we have changed that system. But the new system is much better, you'll see. All will become clear once you've seen this map."

And I didn't even get a chance to ask "What map?" because, as quick as a flash, AA had handed me the scroll of paper and dashed off in the opposite direction without so much as a good bye.
On my own now, I decided all I could do was open this scroll and see what this map, or whatever it was, had to say for itself. Sure enough it turned out to be a treasure map, as promised, but not like any ordinary treasure map. For some reason, instead of the usual one 'X' marking the spot of the treasure, unusually there was actually 3 and three different routes were clearly marked out leading to these three locations all within the building I was standing in.

From reading the instructions printed on the map, it immediately became clear to me that it was up to me to choose one of these locations to go to collect my reward. Once I collect this reward, the other treasures somehow disappear. There was more though - it said that most treasures would contain an amount very close to the usual 5 pieces of Gold, but on a rare occasion I might just strike lucky and and get an amount as much as 20 times that. I was so excited I didn't even care how bizarre that actually sounded.

I had a quick think and decided to pick the route that clearly led into the staff room. I headed into the staff room and there in the middle of the room stood a safe. I thought all my dreams had suddenly come true and I thanked God for giving this blessing to me. I still hadn't looked in the safe but I knew for sure this had to be my day.

The first inkling I had that something was wrong was when I noticed that the safe door was wide open. 'That could not be a good sign', I thought to myself. I walked right into the safe and there was absolutely no sign of any gold in this particular safe. What was there instead? A Leo Messi signed football shirt? A stash of porn magazines? A plasma screen TV?
No! It was a bloody sofa! A very nice sofa but still completely useless to me.
&quot😉amn you Almighty Admin!" I shouted time and again but to no avail. I was stuck with this sofa whether I liked it or not!

NOTE 1: I did in fact get 4.96 Gold from my Treasure Map and not a sofa! 🙂

NOTE 2: This article may or may not be either fully or partially based on an episode of Kenan and Kel entitled "Safe and Sorry". 😃