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

Re: My handful

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

J, the $50M contract happened to me, which is why Metageek knows it. The team working on the bid (me included) worked late nights and early mornings for weeks, and then the damn CEO blew it up with that interview. We had been looking at significant-figure bonuses personally, as well as the company ramifications.

I sent the incident to Scott Adams, and I believe he used it in his "Boss goes to Irish Line Dancing lessons and doesn't mail the bid" strips.

Nepotism: my sister's company has been partially drained dry by the company credit cards issued to the two former-owner's daughters. The credit cards were canceled this month and everyone who actually does any work there (not the daughters, who have been "fired" if you can call what they were doing before "work") are taking a 10-20% paycut to try and recover. And the poor daughters, oh, we weep for them: they now have to pay for their own apartments! And their own luxury boxes at stadiums!

Other things that really happened to me: Salespeople being called in to help assemble and ship out computers in the last few days before the end of the month. I started not answering my phone the last week of every month due to this -- you only got called if you lived within about 5 miles to the office/factory. I'm sure you can imagine the skill level displayed by office workers on the production line. (Also used by Scott Adams: "This one's getting gum!" He actually wrote back to me on that one, which he stopped doing later.)

Re: My handful

[jducoeur]

The team working on the bid (me included) worked late nights and early mornings for weeks, and then the damn CEO blew it up with that interview.

Ouch -- a definite "fist of death" moment.

Lots of fine ideas here: thanks!