Seeking office horror stories
Mar. 25th, 2009 11:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jducoeurI 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,![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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...)
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...)![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
My handful
Date: 2009-03-26 03:54 pm (UTC)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
Date: 2009-03-26 07:48 pm (UTC)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."...
Re: My handful
Date: 2009-03-26 07:53 pm (UTC)And I'm sure that convinced the doubters.
...a dungeon master named Zing?
Re: My handful
Date: 2009-03-27 03:03 am (UTC)-- Dagonell
Re: My handful
Date: 2009-03-28 12:12 pm (UTC)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
Date: 2009-03-28 03:37 pm (UTC)Ouch -- a definite "fist of death" moment.
Lots of fine ideas here: thanks!