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

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Construction was proceeding on the roof above us, to fix perpetual leaks (including flooding a machine room). Halfway through the day, a small metal i-beam burst through the ceiling, and one ended landed square in the middle of someone's chair. Luckily they were home that day.

There's always the "Network Closet is right through the lady's bathroom" saga, but that's not mine.

A friend of mine had a coworker he called "Muttering Lad", for obvious reasons.

My current cube is located *in* a conference room, effectively. At the morning stand-ups for the team doing Agile development, I am an unwilling participant. Obviously this can be taken to extremes.

In a previous office I removed a cube wall to get more space/light (before even seeing Office Space); management *freaked* until I demonstrated I could reattach it at will. (It's two screws!)

In some of our conference rooms, the only whiteboards are *behind* the projector screens. This is...not useful.

And of course, the assistant IT guy at my past job is now a successful Ultimate Fighter...

Re: My handful

[dagonell.livejournal.com]

There was a data company here in Buffalo, original name escapes me at the moment, that changed their name to Client Logic Integrated Technologies. They had a billboard on the roof, forms, stationary, business cards, etc all printed out. When they gave stationary to 'the girls in the steno pool' one of them worked out the acrostic. It cost them nearly $10K to destroy all evidence of the new name and go with Client Logic. :D
-- Dagonell

Policies

[metageek.livejournal.com]

Don't overlook the possibilities of badly written policies. Ideally, if they're comprehensible at all, they should ban what you need to do, while having loopholes that mean you can do what they're trying to forbid.

For example, an alcohol-and-drugs policy that (a) bans illegal drugs, but only if they impair your performance; (b) accidentally bans the use of alcohol-based cleansers; and (c) accidentally bans salespeople from paying for a meal with a customer if the customer orders alcohol.

Re: Policies

[jducoeur]

Oh, that's delicious. I'll have to think about working it in -- thanks...

[jducoeur]

We left on less than 5 minutes notice and couldn't take anything at all from the old building in case it was contaminated.

Wow -- that's an impressive little horror story. I imagine a lot of companies wouldn't even survive that particular experience. Definitely some possibilities in those proposed scenarios -- thanks!

[jducoeur]

Ah -- definite potential there. I'm afraid I was the offender in the Convoq version of that: one of our QA guys couldn't *stand* garlic, which clashed poorly with my morning bagels...

[jducoeur]

Halfway through the day, a small metal i-beam burst through the ceiling

Jeez -- that's essentially how my character in Edsel got killed for the first time. Scary to hear about a real-life version almost happening.

Lots of good ideas here: Muttering Lad practically writes itself, and the cube in the conference room has lots of potential for pain. (I'm already thinking about the "moving day" plot, with musical chairs of the cubicles.) Thanks!

More... (yep, all these are real)

[anu3bis.livejournal.com]

Here's some of the printable ones:

1) The person who uses the microwave for either a) the most delicious-smelling and therefore distracting food or b) the most horrific-smelling, and therefore distracting food (and never cleans it).

2) The small office that buys the best, most expensive server rack, then puts it in the kitchen, plugged into the same outlet as the fridge.

3) The tech support rep who puts the customer on hold, mutters a mantra of foul curses to himself, then comes back again with a perfect phone manner.

4) The Tragedy of the Commons that is the company fridge. No one cleans it, though there are frequent email on when everything is getting thrown out.

(This begs for a running gag - everyone in the game has a real-life cell phone. The GMs can mass-text everyone with "company emails"
> Fred from accounting's daughter is selling girl scout cookies
> Time to clean out the fridge
> Sign up for the softball team
> Fred from accounting is running in the 10k Cause of the Week marathon
> Ethel is leaving, keep it quiet, we're giving her the same cake we do for everyone else who leaves, and everyone pretends its a surprise.
> Fred from accounting has heard about a brand new virus, and wanted to warn everyone

[alexx-kay.livejournal.com]

Another: has a big ring of keys attached to a belt loop, so jangles whenever he walks.

[siderea]

a closely-guarded "how to use the copier" bluesheet.

From my present internship: Include the fact that after entering the valid accounting code, you have to press the button marked X. Only the actual "X" on the button has long been worn completely off.

Re: More... (yep, all these are real)

[siderea]

a) the most delicious-smelling and therefore distracting food

Which reminds me -- it's not a horror story, but jducoeur if you want to somehow use my Cookies for Claris story in this, be my guest.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

More bits I am recalling:

The VPs (multiple VPs, company size < 25, bad sign) of the startup that was colocated with yours called a planning meeting, and insisted on a "Survivor" theme, complete with immunity necklaces, etc. We voted them all off the island, except for the VP whose idea it had originally been (who was really more like a lead developer).

Today I heard about a story where a brand-new server line of some expensive vintage was being deployed; a soon-to-be-ex-VP insisted that they "christen" the first model by breaking a bottle of champagne over it, while it was running. Despite engineers on standby with towels, the machine shorted and had to be replaced entirely. Oops!

Re: More... (yep, all these are real)

[jducoeur]

Hmm. I'm not remembering this story offhand (my legendarily poor memory strikes again) -- link, by any chance? Googling on "Claris siderea" turns up many hits, but all of them are in latin...

[cellio]

There has to be a badly-done layoff in there somewhere, right? Here, let me share two that I witnessed:

1. Company doing its first layoff gathers everyone together and announces the names of those who'll be leaving soon -- one of whom is not there because she's on her honeymoon. There is a hasty instruction to keep that one quiet until she returns.

2. Company has been in trouble for a while (after the dot-com bubble). At the holiday party, the CEO tells the following joke (summarized here; you can fill in the bits with Google): "Man on his deathbed, talking to his wife. Remember when we had that terrible car accident and I was laid up for six months, and you were there to take care of me? Remember when my business failed and we ate ramen and lived in a shack for a year, and you stayed by me? And now, during this illness, you've never left my side. You know what? You're bad luck." Two weeks later he laid us all off; apparently we were bad luck for him.

[cellio]

The intercom. Not only is it annoying when the announcements are semi-legitimate, but it's even worse when people abuse it -- pranks, OT stuff, solicitations (girl scout cookies etc), etc. This could be a running gag through the game. (One we hear a lot that's on-topic but still... "so-and-so, please come to your meeting in $conference_room".

Fridge: tragedy of the commons as mentioned above, and also the food thief.

Microwave: burnt popcorn. If you sit within 100 meters, you're affected.

Annoying noises: cell phones (left behind on people's desks while they go to meetings) with annoying ring tones, Loud Howard, gum-popping slob, guy who plays music just loudly enough to intrude (but too quietly for you to really hear), long personal phone calls (get a room!), the substrain of the previous involving arguments...

IT policies.

[jducoeur]

(multiple VPs, company size < 25, bad sign)

Shades of Trenza: 25 employees, four of whom were "Director of Technology".

insisted on a "Survivor" theme

A *definite* possibility for Mandatory Fun.

a soon-to-be-ex-VP insisted that they "christen" the first model by breaking a bottle of champagne over it, while it was running.

Okay, that's a corporate version of the Darwin Award...

[jducoeur]

There has to be a badly-done layoff in there somewhere, right?

*Blink* -- I honestly hadn't thought about that. Yes, you're right: that definitely needs to be in there somewhere! Thanks...

[jducoeur]

The intercom.

Several people have brought this one up -- I hadn't realized that it was such a topic of hatred, but I'm clearly going to have to try to do something with it.

Microwave: burnt popcorn. If you sit within 100 meters, you're affected.

Well, not 100 meters, but a very good idea -- having some sort of ranged-attack mechanic around the microwave might work quite well. (Combining with hfcougar's idea above, I now have an image of everybody taking 3 Hit Points of Rancid Catfish Damage. Not that the game will probably have hit points per se, but you get the idea.)

Great stuff -- thanks!

Re: More... (yep, all these are real)

[jducoeur]

The tech support rep who puts the customer on hold, mutters a mantra of foul curses to himself, then comes back again with a perfect phone manner.

Oh, this leads me down *bad* roads. I don't know if even I would dare write the Support Engineer with a bad case of Tourette's, but it's rather tempting.

The Tragedy of the Commons that is the company fridge.

Right! Yes, this definitely needs something. (Man, furnishing the lunchroom is going to be a props challenge.)

And the mass-texting mechanic is intriguing. I hadn't thought about that, but you're right that we are almost at the point of being able to assume that everyone has SMS...

Re: More... (yep, all these are real)

[anu3bis.livejournal.com]

Furnishing the lunch room? Not so hard, really. Get AGMs with kids. We've got wood bananas, tomatoes, eggs, and so on.

To go a little more abstract, brown paper bags with names on them, containing contingency envelopes. Heck, catch me early enough next year and I'll make up sandwiches at the con suite.

On the SMS angle, I'm not sure I've seen much use of tech as a prop in a LARP - makes you wonder what folks could do if they went all-out.

oh, man, not kidding...

[anu3bis.livejournal.com]

First thing I did when I got our new PBX was to disable the page features.
It's bad enough that the windows face Harvard Square and every siren makes the customers think the building's on fire, but to have pages too? No way.

Hmm...are customers a part of the game? Making them thread the PBX or front desk would be interesting.

One company had about 4 rounds of layoffs...

[anu3bis.livejournal.com]

...over the length of 2 years. Each time, folks were called into one of two rooms, the big room and the small room. You didn't want to be in the small room.

Re: oh, man, not kidding...

[jducoeur]

My current thinking is that customers / clients may be horde / cast, but probably aren't principal characters -- it's just too hard to tie them deeply enough into the plot web to make them satisfying to play.

(But having some as horde is *very* possible. This makes me think about the possibility of the rude / abusive / persistent client, who keeps calling various people to yell at them...)

Re: One company had about 4 rounds of layoffs...

[jducoeur]

Nice piece of background -- I might work that in somehow...

Re: More... (yep, all these are real)

[metageek.livejournal.com]

Depending on the group, you can probably assume it; but you can't necessarily assume that everybody's carriers play nicely together. I'm on AT&T; I've learned that I can't reliably send messages to my father on Verizon. SMS may or may not get through; MMS pictures turn into a message telling him to go to their Web site to see them.