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

[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...

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

[jducoeur]

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

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

[learnedax.livejournal.com]

There was the time the whole company got called to a same-day surprise mandatory offsite meeting, and half of them were discreetly lead to each of the two rooms, with my half asked not to try returning to the office. That was 5 days before Christmas.

For multiple rounds of layoffs, jducoeur and I got to see maybe 4 rounds where each time the management swore it would be the last...