Island Turtle makes everyone happy except when he doesn't

My manager was not happy the day she met Island Turtle. I was working in the bakeshop of the Jewel near my college at this point in my life and typically worked evening shifts after classes.

"What is this Island Turtle?" my manager demanded as I walked into work for the evening. "I get to work this morning and see that the shelves are practically empty, that's there is very little back up, and yet there was time yesterday to draw some turtle on an island?"

Yikes. I wanted to say that it actually only takes me about thirty seconds to sketch Island Turtle, but I had a feeling that answer wouldn't help my case.

Island Turtle is cool on cardboard.

I went instead with the better choice of apologizing. My manager, who happens to be one of the most patient and understanding people I've had the chance to work for, shrugged and told me it was fine as long as I didn't do it again.

So I worked extra hard during my shift and before she left for the evening, cautiously brought up Island Turtle again.

"Basically, he's awesome," I told her as she looked at me with a raised eyebrow. "I'm serious. Island Turtle is just sort of there - he's on an island, but it's ok - he's just there to relax."

She looked at the drawing again and shook her head. "He's either the biggest turtle I've seen or on the most pathetic island imaginable."

I assured her that it was a little bit of both.

During the time I worked in the bakeshop there, my coworkers slowly became familiar with Island Turtle. He had a tendency to show up on our whiteboard for motivation, although it wasn't unheard of for him to show up on another cardboard box. In fact, when I stopped working there because I was moving down to Florida, I even made clay keepsake Island Turtles for all of my bakeshop coworkers.

They were even all kind enough to act impressed when presented with their wonderful gifts.