Several Meaning

It was a rainy afternoon when Sarah walked into the office, clutching a cup of coffee. As she sat down at her desk, her colleague Ben appeared, looking somewhat flustered. He had a folder in his hand, but there was something missing. 'Sarah, have you seen the papers? The ones with the budget proposal?' Ben asked, pacing back and forth. Sarah looked at her computer screen, where several tabs were open. 'Which papers are you talking about?' she asked. 'You know, the ones I showed you last week! There were several documents in that folder, but now it’s only half of them!' Ben said, sounding increasingly anxious. He ran a hand through his hair. Sarah thought for a moment. 'I remember there were several papers in that folder when you showed them to me, but I haven't seen them since then. Are you sure they’re not on your desk?' Ben shook his head. 'I’ve already checked several times. They must be somewhere around here. Maybe someone moved them.' As they continued searching the office, their conversation shifted. 'Maybe we should ask several of the other team members if they’ve seen them,' Sarah suggested. 'Good idea,' Ben agreed, but as they walked down the hallway to ask others, they began to think about the larger issue at hand. The office was a small one, and several people usually worked closely together. Despite the tight space, things occasionally went missing. After asking a few colleagues, Sarah and Ben found out that the missing papers had indeed been misplaced by one of their team members, who had used several of them to prepare a presentation without returning them. In the end, they managed to recover the papers, but Sarah and Ben had learned a valuable lesson about keeping track of important documents. The mystery was solved, but the number of times they'd searched the office and asked around had made them realize that they might need a better system in place for organizing their files. Later, Sarah laughed. 'I guess it only took several attempts to find out where they went!' she joked. 'Well,' Ben replied, 'at least we got it sorted after several tries!'