...or in someone's pocket...
And, that's where it will be.
I was the parts manager at a dealership for over 10 years. Every single time a critical key came up missing, some jackass ended up having it in his pocket.
One guy was so bad (he'd take the keys of nice trades, and even some new cars, and hide them) he actually got caught stashing a key under a rock on the side lawn of the store. Can you imagine?
In about 94, we had a long, wet fall. I came to work one morning at about 7 a.m., as was my habit, in a pouring rain. I opened up the parts dept. and went about my morning routine until the service manager came in and said something about water rising in the back parking lot of the store. The water table had had just about all it was going to take.
The store itself was built on higher ground, but a creek ran about 100 yards or better behind the rr parking area. That area was not raised and had a dozen brand new Acuras parked in it. They'd just rolled off the truck the previous evening...not even PDI'ed yet (pre delivery inspection).
When I walked out the back of the shop, I saw the water was indeed rising in that area.
We went to the accounting offices and grabbed the keys to the new cars and moved them...except for two.
Brand new cars. We knew they had keys the night before because they had to be started and driven off the carrier truck.
The keys were not to be found.
By this time, it was about 8 a.m. The sales staff began trickling in and as they entered, we asked for keys.
"Nope. No keys," was the reply from everyone.
Then, at about 8:45 a.m., two sets of keys magically appeared on the desk of our office manager which is, coincidentally, where the rest of the keys had come from an hour earlier.
By this time, there was a river (not a creek) running through the lowest part of that back parking area. That running water separated us from those two stranded cars, but there was a ridge of higher ground remaining behind the cars. But, the water was rising very quickly.
Given how long it was going to take to run all the way around that ridge, get to a car, and back it along the ridge to higher ground, the decision was made to go though the river rather than try to go around.
Would you believe neither the service manager nor the sales manager, who were the other two guys working with me, could swim? I still believe one of them was BSing me, but I swam out, got one car and pulled it around, returning for the other. I drove the second car out with a foot of water up over the ridge.
Scary day, but it had a silver lining. I was soaked to the skin when the owner arrived. He sent me home and told me to take the rest of the day off. :grin