The Contest
At my very odd place of work, the higher-ups spend a larger than usual portion of their time thinking up activities that we "worker-ant" employees can be involved in. I suppose these activities are intended to build morale and teach us how to work as a team, but the truth is, departments are pitted against each other in a no-holds barred frenzy of scheming, thwarting and sabotaging. The latest activity is a department decoration contest for the holidays. At stake are the official bragging rights and a day off for each employee in the winning department.
Three days ago, our department supervisor called us into a secret, closed door meeting; we were there to brainstorm and decide what theme our department was going to do. My coworkers came up with a bevy of suggestions, from “Village of Lights” to “Working in a Winter Wonderland”… we finally decided on “Gingerbread House”, partly because our particular department consists of 6 cubes in a rectangle - we look like one of those mini ice-trays that you had in your mini-fridge at college. [What is it about college that they give you only partial things? You don’t get a regular sized ice-tray, only this thing that looks like it can make 6 Chicklet-sized ice cubes… you don’t get a full oven range with 4 burners, just one hot plate... you don’t get a full seven-digit phone number, they only give your four numbers instead… anyway, I digress] So, because of the positioning of our cubes, it is “ideal” to create a house with a roof on top. This was what we had come up with at the end of hour one. Next we had to come up with a game-plan… what would the sides look like? How would we make the windows? Should we use cotton or paint? These types of questions were answered during the second hour. The third hour was devoted to deciding who in our group was going to do what particular task. I was assigned to be the structural engineer to make the roof "happen". At this point my mind is already fast-forwarding ahead to try and figure out what the simplest way to accomplish this would be, but my excited co-workers keep interrupting me with suggestions… “All you need to do is get some PVC pipe from Home Depot”... “How about wood? You could get some 2X4’s and cut each piece down to make the frame”... “No, big sheets of plywood… don’t they make really light plywood?”... “Bed-sheets! Go to Goodwill and get some really cheap bed-sheets! If you can’t find brown, just get some light colored ones and dye them!” While hearing these *brilliant* suggestions, in my head I am replying with the many reasons why they won’t work, are too complicated, or are just plain idiotic. But on the outside I am nodding my head, saying things like “Gee.. that’s a swell idea!” Eventually everyone is throwing up ideas for all sorts of things we can do to make the “bestest Gingerbread house ever!" As each idea is blurted out they get more giddy and enthusiastic, and everyone is subconsciously trying to “top” each others previous suggestion, so the ideas are getting wilder and even more unrealistic. I haven’t said anything for a while at this point, which I guess was a mistake, because then my supervisor says: “You’re the creative one… we need something that nobody else has done… something that will just blow everyone away!” And now everybody is looking at me expectantly… for some reason, my mind cues up to a scene in the movie “The Cable Guy”, the one where Jim Carey surprises Matthew Broderick with a big-screen tv surround sound system that is so spectacular that “it would make George Lucas cream in his pants”.. I remember that during that scene, playing on the big-screen TV was a video of a fireplace burning. I know what DVD that is… it is actually called “Fireplace – Visions of Tranquility – soothing music and natural sounds”… the whole DVD is 60 minutes of footage of a crackling fire. Why do I know this? Because I actually own that DVD. Don’t ask why… you really probably don’t want to know… anyway, I explain about this DVD and suggest that I can bring my small flat-panel LCD up to work, wrap some brick-paper around all of the TV except for the screen part, so that it appears to look like a chimney. Bingo… they liked that idea… which is good because it is actually pretty easy compared to creating a working gingerbread house roof. Finally we are let out of the closed-door meeting to return to our cubes. Already, other departments in the office are huddled together in various random spots, whispering and conniving. My headache is three hours old, and as I unlock my computer I see about 15 emails that came while I was in the meeting.
The next day started with me lugging rolls of brown shipping paper, tape, Styrofoam, fishing line, and other building blocks of the Gingerbread house from my car to my cube. I quickly log in and see that my email box is even fuller than the day before. But there is no time for real work… we have a Gingerbread house to build! “Where is the PVC pipe?” someone says… “Umm.. I think this 80-pound test fishing line will work just fine…” “I don’t know if that will work.. won’t it break?” Silently I am thinking that they probably should be more concerned that I don’t break their nose with the giant plastic candy cane they are holding. Ever hear the phrase “Too many cooks in the kitchen”? That’s exactly how it was. I am standing on a file cabinet, pushing ceiling tiles out of the way so that I can start tying the lattice work that will support the roof while everyone else just kind of looks up at me offering advice. I am already at the limit of what I can take, and when that happens my normal reaction is to just tune people out and physically do what I already figured out in my head… but what also happens is that I am concentrating so much on what I am doing, that when I am pressed for an answer to one of their questions, my response ends up sounding ridiculous… for example, someone asked something like “Are you going to tie a line from the center of the roof down to each corner wall?” and my response was something like “uhhmmm… yeah… I am going to tie this…. thingy up here so that I can…. loop it over the tile thingys topwise… and that should… yeah, that should work…” As soon as I say it I think how it doesn’t really specifically answer what they asked, but I am just too busy to stop and reword what I just said. So I am tying fishing line all over the place and out of the corner of my eye I can see what other departments are doing… people are pulling dollys around, some people are measuring things, someone else is going around looking for tape and thumbtacks. As the day progresses, real work still has not even been started, and other employees are getting louder. An employee from one department made the mistake of entering another departments territory and they were accused of spying. Someone else was chastised for taking all of the empty paper boxes. People began hoarding. Tools, especially cutting instruments, were fiercely guarded. An exacto knife became the most treasured and desired possession.
All day our department did nothing but convert our area into a Gingerbread house. No files were reviewed, no emails were answered. Ringing phones were left to be forwarded to voice-mail. When I finally left for the day, I left with half of the roof done and a list of supplies to get from Walmart. I stayed an hour and a half past the time I usually leave… later I found out that others stayed much later than that.
One group that stayed late was a department whose theme was “Ice Palace”. They had spent most of the day building a very detailed and creative castle… it was huge… it was about five feet tall, 3 feet wide – one half was the castle part, the other half was the building that we worked in. From what I heard, it was beautiful. So beautiful, that somebody in the buildings cleaning crew stole it later that night! When I came in the next morning, that departments employess were furious… some people were ranting, others were being consoled… it appears that the thief only desired the castle-part of the decoration, and all that was left was the mangled half with the part that was supposed to be our building. Again, I only heard this, partly because we were no longer allowed to enter that departments territory, and partly because it was being treated like a crime scene. We have cameras everywhere, and it is not like they are even hidden… I can’t imagine how someone could think they could have gotten away with a giant castle, but maybe they thought the cameras were fake, or they were not turned on, or maybe the castle was just so spectacular that they didn’t care… I never actually saw it so I don’t know. Some people thought it was a ploy hatched by another department… others thought it was a scheme to try and gain the sympathy of the judges. Some people say the castle never existed in the first place. It has already become an office legend. But our IT person solved the mystery as he played footage of a member of the cleaning crew scurrying out the door with a gleaming pink castle in their greedy little hands.
End of Part 1… I will post Part 2 after the winner has been announced…
Here is a random thought I just had… You know how the Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew books had titles like “The Secret of the Old Mill”? I always thought that a funny title for one of these books could be: “The Mystery of the Mysterious Mystery”! I like how the same word is used differently each time in that title… anyway, not sure why that has not been done, or why I even thought of it just now.
