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

[serakit.livejournal.com]

Well, we fairly often discuss our sex lives at work and have violent ice wars, but I don't exactly work in an office... I also work with a guy who told me about how he was going to shoplift after work.

[jducoeur]

Heh. The sex talk and the shoplifting angle both have definite promise (and I'll chew on the ice wars) -- thanks!

[hfcougar.livejournal.com]

I recommend checking out something called FISH.

Work made fun gets done! *gag* *stab*stab*stab*

Also, I shit you not, the guy down the hall from me sings everything as if his life were a musical, and has wreaked a horror upon us all known as "Phil Collins Friday". There is a special circle of hell just for him.

[jducoeur]

... wow, that may be weirder than anything I could come up with on my own.

As for FISH -- hadn't heard of it, but it suggests a bunch of delicious plot options. Thanks!

[hfcougar.livejournal.com]

Oh, and everyone in my office has this thing for clicking their pens. It's the national pastime of my workplace. Everywhere one goes, clickclickclick click click... The people in our West Coast office HATE us for this and always have to scold someone over the teleconference to cut it the hell out.

[jducoeur]

Hah! This demands an OCD character, to turn into open warfare...

[doubleplus.livejournal.com]

Ooooh, boy. I've got a long list from the last days of my company from a few years back. And I had lunch yesterday with a friend who's currently in the midst of an office horror (the works, "not a team player" and everything); I'll have to collect his stories, too.

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

This could be a minor detail, of the dripping-water-torture type:

For quite a while, I sat in the cube nearest the fax machine and the copier, and would regularly get questions about how to operate them. I did not have a secretarial/administrative job, but for some reason everyone that had troubles with the things asked me for help, interrupting whatever I was working on. The group secretary was only 20 feet away.

[jducoeur]

Heh. Given that the copier is *clearly* significant to this game, I may have to work this one in. Thanks!

[elizabear.livejournal.com]

I had a boss who put air quotes around at least one word in *every* conversation. There was no irony, it was just his habit. He was also awful about zig-zagging on the way to his work goals; every time he heard a bright and shiny idea about working effectively or efficiently, he would call a meeting within hours and make it our new policy.

[jducoeur]

Hah! Oh, that's great -- positively Dilbert-esque. I may have to write a character around this guy: he's just perfect for this game. Thanks!

[jadasc.livejournal.com]

I may have to play in this game, despite having almost no actual office experience. You know, for the challenge of it.

[aishabintjamil.livejournal.com]

* I work for an environmental consulting firm. We moved the office last fall. In the course of packing our chemist discovered a box of soil samples from Fort Devens (potentially containing pesticides and maybe some PCBs, depending on exactly where they were from, in her office under some boxes of papers. They were all in sealed jars, and being from 2006, anything they might have leaked into the air was long gone, but it did result in her getting a lot of crap from the rest of us about why she had them. (We don't do any in-house analysis, so there was absolutely no good reason to bring samples back to the office. They go straight to the subcontracted lab, and from there to the labs disposal facilities). This was preceded by a week or so by our safety officer sending around a notice about proper disposal of any chemical containing items (mostly thinking of things like field test kits).

* our IT person came in a couple of months ago proudly announcing that he'd just bought the same model of semi-automatic gun as they used on the A-Team over the weekend. (The office is in NH).

* one of our senior managers has a cell phone with a ring-tone made by recording a particularly resonant cow mooing. Before that he had a small, pathetic kitten. It provides entertainment when he forgets to turn it off during large meetings.

* not really office exactly, but we're an EPA contractor, and sent people down to assist with the Hurricane Katrina response. One morning the daily safety briefing included the following caution: "If you must pick up hookers after your shift, please remove your EPA COntractor shirt first. Also, please refrain from doing it in the lobby of the hotel we're putting you up in."

Many years ago when I was at MIT Lincoln Labs one of the resident PhDs came over one Monday morning to tell me that the terminal on the Symbolics computer had been emitting smoke on Saturday, and now it wasn't working. I asked him if he'd unplugged it, and reported it to security. No, of course he hadn't. He just went home. Leaving behind him a piece of electronics that might have been ready to start a fire.

[jducoeur]

Oh, those are delicious. I may have to circulate the hooker memo in-game, just for sheer giggles. (It interacts interestingly with the stripper story, down-thread.) Thanks!

[liamstliam.livejournal.com]

There needs to be a guy who takes most of the donuts or cookies or whetever else is out.

No, that's not me.

[jducoeur]

Yes, you're right -- there definitely does need to be. (Donuts. Need a meeting with donuts.) Thanks!

[eudociainboston.livejournal.com]

I worked at an online brokerage firm during the tech bubble blow up and we had a client who lost MILLIONS doing stupid shit like buying stuff on margin(against his broker's advice). The receptionist was on vacation and all non brokers were taking a turn on phones so this guy kept calling saying he was going to come over and kill the big boss- who sat 20 feet from me- but not hurt me because he liked me because I was always able to fix problems with his trading software (uh, yeah, when the bullets start flying like he was going to pay attention to where they were going). The police got involved and the boss paid to have a plainclothed armed guard sit in the reception area all day. Yup, we felt secure (hah). The police caught ex-millionare guy before he made it to the front door of the building carrying a rather large, heavy duffle bag...

Same industry- different firm. We were all called into the conference room to celebrate the release of some new software. There was music, cake, champaigne... and a stripper jumping out of the cake who then gave lap dances for the rest of the party. All paid for by the CEO. The two other women who worked for the firm and I started updating our resumes and left within a month.

At another IT job I walked in on two project managers and a depatment head snorting cocaine in a conference room. They didn't see me and I shut the door fast. The deadline was breathing down our neck but I thought coke was an extreme way to deal with it. Looking back, their drug use explained a LOT about their management styles.

Is that enough? Because I have more.

[jducoeur]

Wow. Those are not just interesting, they're very well-suited to LARP -- I might well use all three of them. Thanks!

(And feel free to keep unloading if you're so motivated: at this point, I'm collecting any and all ideas. Once those start running down, I'll begin to mix down the game and see what comes out of it. Don't feel pressed -- this is a *great* collection -- but I'd be entirely happy to get more...)

[dryfoo.livejournal.com]

Here's an idea: your game's lore-master character (or npc) -- the guy who actually knows where the forms are kept and the bodies are buried? He's disguised as a "Wally" -- a guy whose only apparent office activities are morning coffee break and extensive non-business-related copying and printing. Other than that, he resides, oracle-like, in a men's room stall, doing crossword puzzles and dispensing wisdom to any who can figure out that he's the guy to ask.

[jducoeur]

This actually synergizes rather well with a suggestion msmemory made last night. Might well do that -- thanks!

[fenicedautun.livejournal.com]

This isn't a horror story per se, but this is what my job really was like (before laid off) and may work well for getting a character inserted into a LARP. I worked for a department based in Charlotte, on a national project, with nobody in the office building I was in working with me. Many of them encountered me on projects (I knew people, and they knew who I was and what I did), but my work was completely separate. And my boss would generally miss our meetings where she'd tell me what was going on, and then call randomly later. (I actually wondered whether she'd call me to lay me off, or whether I'd first know when I couldn't log in.)

And my first job after college, the office manager would hire her family to be admins, controlled the petty cash box, and was always out sick. And the office handyman was mentally disabled (really, he was what would have been called slow 50 years ago), and he had so much trouble understanding which sodas people wanted him to order for the Coke machine. (I think really I'm just giving you good ideas for NPCs who can turn up to make things happen.)

[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...

[siderea]

So there was the temp job I had where it turned out the drepartmental pres, vp, and their pet secretary (the one they were being forced to discharge for gross dereliction endangering others lives) all belonged to the same cult. And I do mean cult -- this was at a university that had banned that same religious org from recruiting on campus because of their, uh, techniques.

[jducoeur]

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

My handful

[metageek.livejournal.com]

The chief engineer who started dating the secretary. Followed by the CEO who started sleeping with her.

The Wally who could never understand why he needed to shut down his Unix machine (instead of just flipping the switch), or why his files kept getting corrupted. Oh, or why he got fired when he spent an hour and a half snoring at his desk.

The development manager for Netscape who, on his way to a meeting to license important strategic technology, wound up chatting about it for hours on the plane with someone who turned out to work for Microsoft.

The VP who told the press about a $50M contract that the company was sure to win...two weeks before the decision was made. The customer was not pleased. The company did not get the contract.

The "how we did it at my last job" guy.

The people who spend vast chunks of time on their fantasy football leagues. (To quote Dave Barry: "This is crazy, right? If these people said they were managing herds of pretend caribou, the authorities would be squirting lithium down their throats with turkey basters.")

The marketing VP who spent $100,000 on advice on how to rename the company, came up with a really stupid name, and didn't let the fact that the name was already taken slow her down. (The other company was in a different industry, but stupidname.com was taken, so she registered stupidnameinc.com...and was surprised when customers sending email kept forgetting the "inc".)

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."...

[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...

[jducoeur]

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

[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.

[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...)

[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

[jducoeur]

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

[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!)

[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.

[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.

[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!

[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.

[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...

[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...

[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!

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...

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

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.

[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.

[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...

[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]

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!