Seeking office horror stories

[jducoeur]

I seem to have accidentally wound up with the high concept for my game for Intercon next year. (As so often, it's all Christian's fault: he is always a font of game ideas.)

To that end, I am looking for any and all ideas for Drip -- the water-cooler horror game. It's going to be a vicious satire of All Things Office. The ideas are already flowing pretty quickly, but I welcome more: if you have character ideas, situations or just war stories about Office Life, send them along and I might work them in. Feel free to brainstorm wildly: weird and unlikely isn't necessarily a bar here. (Those who remember Panel will know how willing I am to get downright strange in my scenarios.)

(No, tpau, I'm not bidding it yet. Among other things, I haven't figured out the game's scope yet. It might be a one-hour 10-person Z game, a two-hour 20-person Sunday-or-Friday game, or a full four-hour 25-to-30-person slot. Once I understand how big the game is, I can think about bidding it...)

Comments

Speaking of drugs...

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

In a meeting with a member of our Corporate Overlords who was in town to Help us with design. "It should be amazing -- like the first time you ever took heroin!"

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

From recent experience:
* Office floods, requiring mass move to temporary space.
* Company that supplies water for the water coolers is very slow to respond to 'we ran out of water!' situations.
* General SNAFUs with Health Insurance paperwork. The HR dept, the provider, the insurer, and the employee all have differing ideas about who is responsible for what.

You might also check out Bureaucracy for ideas. A 'combat' mechanic based on Blood Pressure, for example...

[jjaynes.livejournal.com]

At my last job 3/4 of the staff could not understand the fax or copier at all, and kept coming to me (the administrator) to say it was broken, but as soon as I went over to the machine and looked sternly at it it would spit out whatever they had tried to copy/fax.

I would die laughing if some character actually got a computer error message like my co-workers used to report to me, things like "It just won't print," or "It's broken."

There's also the outside auditor who comes in with an inch-thick stack of paperwork to do the annual review and insists on asking each and every question verbatim despite the fact that you've already provided them with the entire form filled out by email, and it's all the same as last year. Including "do you have a wheelchair accessible office?" when they just walked into the office and saw for themselves.

Oh, and the paper-hoarder. Someone who hates paperwork but whose job requires a lot of documentation, and thus always has a ton of paper sitting (or hiding?) around their office waiting to be filled out, some of it from 1997. And they get super-defensive if anyone asks when the paperwork will be finished.

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

People:
THE LOVE GOD -- Thinks he's god's gift to women, they can't stand him. Overpowering cologne, unbuttoned shirts, etc. Keeps condoms and booze in his desk drawer "just in case".

THE TECH GEEK -- Tape on glasses, pocket protector, can tell you anything about Star Wars, Star Trek, Heroes, etc. Totally indispensible, he can fix anything, just don't ask him what he did because you won't be able to understand him.

THE SUPER SECRETARY -- She does it all! Sometimes she even does work for the company. Sends out all the birthday and anniversary cards, knows all the Heloise Hints for getting martini stains out of suits, runs the office lottery pool and fantasy football. When she calls in sick, three CEOs call in as well, because they can't function without her.

THE BOSS'S NEPHEW -- Makes more than you do, does less than you do. Cannot be fired and knows it. Lives to make your life miserable.

Scenarios:
Two people apparently cannot stand each other. People go out of their way to keep them apart. It's a ruse, they're lovers (Yes, I watch NCIS, why do you ask?)

The big contract bid is due shortly... very shortly. Now, if only they'd stop changing the specs.

More as I think of them.
-- Dagonell, your evil twin

[eclecticmagpie.livejournal.com]

Salesman who keeps selling the product to people who have computers it won't work on.

Engineer who insists on an elaborate, tremendously lengthy, test of his circuit board, then complains about how long it takes to execute, and compares it to another programmer's quick test software -- which skips the test in question because it took so long to execute.

Manager who explains that one shouldn't waste time looking for the bug in hardware, because it's KNOWN to be a software problem -- turned out it was a stack overflow, in the hardware, and took an extra 6 months to find because of his "help".

The Data General "Eagle" syndrome -- after the Eagle was developed (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine), DG decided that they should, as a general policy, bring in college new-hires and stick them in the middle of failing projects with no management support -- after all, it worked once.

Manager who asks an underling to call and run a meeting, then sabotages the meeting. My favorite from this was "Don't you DARE think that you understand my agenda!"

IT director who, when necessary to reboot the server during office hours, gets on the intercom and announces "This is your Captain speaking. The Computer is going DOWN in five minutes. Repeat, The Computer is Going Down." (his caps!)

[jducoeur]

I begin to think that there should be a lot of little audible tics like this, just to up the annoyance factor...

[jducoeur]

Fascinating. That first bit is almost the inverse of me personally: the person who is in the office every day, but has nothing to do with the project. Yes, I'll have to chew on that -- might make a very interesting character.

Very good point about nepotism: have to get that in *somewhere*.

And yes, many characters will be NPCs or such. Actually, I'm suspecting that this game will be "a little bit Horde", with a small number of players trading in smallish roles of 5-60 minutes...

[jducoeur]

Oh, that is *great* -- it almost demands to go into the LARP somewhere. Thanks!

Re: My handful

[jducoeur]

Lots of excellent ideas -- thanks!

That last one does hit a little close to home, I'm afraid. Our last CEO spent months going around asking everyone what we should rename the company to, shooting down every name suggested, and pushing his own name of "Zing": no matter how much everyone else objected to the idea, or pointed that not only was zing.com taken, but every reasonable variation like xing.com as well, he was bound and determined. Then he decided he wanted "Zingdom", except that was taken as well.

Finally, he managed to pay a marketing company to agree with him and find the domain zing.dm. Which led me from my original mantra of "Convoq. With a q. It's not my fault." to "Zingdom. With a 'dumb'. It's not my fault."...

[jducoeur]

Hmm. Good point -- haven't played Bureaucracy in many years, but it's clearly a good source to mine for inspiration...

Re: My handful

[metageek.livejournal.com]

Finally, he managed to pay a marketing company to agree with him

And I'm sure that convinced the doubters.

and find the domain zing.dm.

...a dungeon master named Zing?

[metageek.livejournal.com]

Office floods [...] very slow to respond to 'we ran out of water!'

They're just trying to make sure you get your RDA of irony.

[jducoeur]

At my last job 3/4 of the staff could not understand the fax or copier at all

Oh, this just *begs* for a game mechanic, and a closely-guarded "how to use the copier" bluesheet.

And yes, the auditor is definitely a must-have character. (And the hoarder has interesting potential, especially if crucial game information is buried somewhere in that stack...)

[jducoeur]

Lots of good ideas. (Especially the Boss' Nephew -- a deliciously annoying type, and a very common one.) Thanks!

[metageek.livejournal.com]

Ooh, intercoms. One company I worked at had that (a broadcast function on the phones, actually), and it was terrible. I wound up having to borrow the manual for the phone system and configure my phone to ignore broadcasts.

[jducoeur]

Lots of good ideas, especially the manager sabotaging the underling's meeting. (Which is very in the spirit of the game.) Thanks!

[de-gonzac.livejournal.com]

My department was evacuated because of suspected asbestos in the building. Four or five work groups were scattered to other buildings without furniture, computers, or paper records (like licenses and engineering drawings). We left on less than 5 minutes notice and couldn't take anything at all from the old building in case it was contaminated. My work group ended up all 4 of us in a small conference room with no ventilation. Our engineering team is located in one corner of a cubicle farm in a building almost ten miles away (where there is no visitor parking).

Scenario 1 - a small work group in the office has nothing whatsoever to do with the main office function, but has been assigned there anyway and has to get by on borrowed supplies and equipment.

18 months later, with the 35 or so asbestos refugees finally settling in, the Big Boss has decided to move all 800 employees to a single office in a bad neighborhood with insufficient parking and less individual work space for everyone.

Scenario 2 - the office will be moving shortly, and only half of your stuff will fit in the new smaller workspaces.

I don't know if either of these fits with the game, but they are frequent topics of conversation where I work.

[aishabintjamil.livejournal.com]

That reminds me of another entertaining bit. Several of my co-workers are very fond of food. And there are often bits of free food left over from lunch meetings, which end up being left in the lunch room for the hordes. Sometimes there's an email announcement, sometimes it just appears and vanishes by chance.

One day I discovered that there are four or five guys who actually have a phone tree set up. One day there were several pizzas left over from a big lunch meeting. One of the guys wanders in, sees them, grabs 3 slices for himself, then picks up the lunchroom phone. The conversation consists of the phrase "Pizza. Lunch Room." . I wisely grabbed myself a couple of slices and settled back in a corner to watch the sharks gather.

[hfcougar.livejournal.com]

Apparently they have now come out with "FISH! The Musical".

It is labeled as "Enter-TRAIN-Ment". Again, I shit you not.

*barf*

n.b. It is not my current employer who wrought onto me the FISH! paradigm, but one several years ago and far away. Thank gods.

[hfcougar.livejournal.com]

In that case, you need someone wandering around trying to sing "Sussudio" in a scratchy, high-pitched falsetto...

[hfcougar.livejournal.com]

Or the people that take 1/4 of a donut. Or leave 1/4 of a donut behind.

1/2 I can SORT OF understand, but 1/4? Get over it!

[hfcougar.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of when I worked for Media Services at my grad school and we all had cell phones we had to carry to each delivery.

"The third floor conference center is empty, but the teleconference room has CAKE!!!"

[hfcougar.livejournal.com]

You also need the requisite college student/grad student intern with really bizarre fashion sense and some kind of weird yet oddly domestic hobby.

[hfcougar.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. I know I kept commenting, but there was also the time back when our office was on the top floor of our building, and the roof kept flooding and leaking under heavy summer rains. Our ceiling literally caved in over our heads. The ED was disgusted when he came out of his office and we were standing around the bulging ceiling making bets on how long the water would take to break through.

It was later discovered that the building manager knew about the roof leaks, and instead of fixing them, had put turkey pans in the ceiling to catch the drips.

[hfcougar.livejournal.com]

Also, at a previous job, we had a microwave and mini-fridge right in the middle of our work unit, despite the fact that our department was one security door and ten feet away from a proper kitchen.

And we had a woman who liked to microwave catfish.