The man looks at his Facebook ads, which he believes are influenced by a conversation he had earlier in a McDonald’s. Ever since his girlfriend’s death, he goes to McDonald’s most days to get breakfast. He then goes to the Met, where he works as a tour guide for the Egyptian Antiquities Gallery. He greets his closest coworker, a woman, and goes to the Egyptian exhibit to lecture his first tour group, who have come from France.

A tourist repeatedly peppers him with questions about Cleopatra’s scarab and its origins. The tour group then moves on, and he lectures the next to come. By lunchtime, the same tourist comes up to him and introduces himself. He asks him further questions about where the scarab came from, implying that it was stolen by the museum. The tourist says that they can discuss the matter at length over lunch.

The man goes to a French bistro nearby to meet the tourist. The tourist says that he possesses documents proving that the museum stole the scarab. The man is guarded, not willing to travel along his line of thought with him. The tourist, however, continues on, floating the idea that the scarab could and should be returned to its rightful owner. The man says he won’t take in any part of it, but he curiously asks about who is involved. The tourist says that he is merely a representative of the Egyptian government. He then says that the Egyptian government wants the man to remove the scarab and give it back to them. The man pushes back, but the tourist says that fifty thousand will be provided merely for looking at his documents, and another million will be granted through a Swiss bank account if the scarab is successfully returned. When the man asks why he has to do it, the tourist says that he trusts his clean background and his experience with the Met. The man ponders it, to which the tourist says that he has until tomorrow evening to think it over.

The next day, the man is lost in thought throughout his shift. His female coworker notices, and he simply says that he’s tired. In his apartment, he thinks about the bleakness of his future from a financial standpoint. On his computer, he is able to verify the authenticity of the documents. The next day, he leads a school tour group through the Egyptian gallery. Later that day, he calls the tourist and says that he can do it within a year, as the Egyptian exhibit—and thus the scarab—will be unloaded and transported at a later date. The tourist trusts that his plan will work but says that they cannot communicate again until a week before the Egyptian exhibit’s departure, which is when he will start to regularly have lunch at the French bistro.

Right away, the man plans his heist. Through research at a library, he figures out crucial parts of his female coworker’s identity. He then opens a post office mailing address, a checking account, and a bunch of social media pages in her name. From then on, he fictitiously lives as her, making all sorts of orders, transactions, and online posts under her name. Through the following year, he leaves a paper trail in her name.

On the day that the Egyptian exhibit gets packed up, the man talks to his female coworker about how he’ll soon be let go when the exhibit departs. She asks him if he’ll help pack it up, and he says that he will. During one of his lunch breaks, he finds the box with the scarab inside and replaces it with a similar-looking box with a similar weight, which he created in preparation. Leaving the Met, he drops his female coworker’s handkerchief to plant evidence. He then delivers the scarab to the tourist at the French bistro.

The female coworker is arrested for stealing the scarab, as investigators find her handkerchief, as well as the paper trail which the man left behind, full of suspicious orders, transactions, and posts relevant to the case. They find out that she allegedly booked a one-way plane ticket to Tunisia. Through her trial, the female coworker professes her innocence, but she is eventually put behind bars, even after the man testifies on her behalf.

From then on, the man uses his money quietly yet lavishly. He remodels his apartment and wonders if the Egyptian government will announce the return of their scarab. After a year, he travels to Paris, still mulling over what happened to his female coworker. Lost in thought, he doesn’t see that a truck is barreling toward him. Just barely, the truck brakes and swerves, leaving it a foot away from him. The driver insults him, but he can only think about how lucky he has been.