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

[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...)

[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.