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WFO: Jason Dorsey

                         

Mr. Dorsey had some fun last week. With the record-setting heat and beautiful blue skies experiences here in the Seattle area, he found himself a change of venue. He sent a brief message with the following pictures:

It is too beautiful a day to be in the office so I am WFO today.  (Working from Outside)

If you need to reach me you can call me on my cell at 425-749-1086 or just “step out” to my office. 

Anyone is welcome to join me for a fun work environment.

Gotta go.  The sunshine and breeze are calling me.

                         

                         

                         

                         

                         

A few minutes later, Jason found himself with a friend (albeit less productive than Mr. Dorsey, who was actually working).

                         

Welcome to Your New Office

                       

What do I always tell you people? That's right, DON'T GO ON VACATION. Nothing good ever comes out of it. So what did I do? I took a week of vacation (and only checked email a couple dozen times), and my team lashed out. Ryan was the main instigator, but apparently they were all in on it. In Ryan's own words:

What can be said?  His turn was coming.  How could we let the opportunity to prank the one that has been known as the “king of pranks” get away with taking a vacation unscathed?  Because of the reputation that was built by our fearless leader, it had to be something great.  Something to be remembered.  Something for all to see and appreciate.  The one that tops them all!  So a plan was devised – we were either going to move him to a new office, or “compress” his office – meaning, take all of his stuff and fit it as tight of a corner as possible, utilizing the fine art of stacking.  The best use of all of the space – floor to ceiling would be needed.  But alas – another idea was presented – Why not give him an office with a view?  So it was decided that cbuck was deserving of the sky bridge, the one that connects RTC B4 and RTC B5.

                    

                         (what it looked like this morning)

The plan was put into place, and Operation: Dinner Out, paying homage to the movie Spy Game, was planned.  We used the code name in case he was expecting something and checking our shared calendars.  Sunday evening the move took place.  The goal was to move as much as practical out of his office and into the sky bridge.  All said and done, his 2 desk sections, phone, speakers, docking station, monitor, printer, file cabinet, refrigerator, bookshelf – with books, mug, and a Cure poster (for a homely feel) were moved.  While this was going on, you could hear the security cameras taking pictures, and I imagined somewhere in a dark room, Microsoft security was watching and that a visit would be coming shortly.

The best was yet to come – Monday morning as cbuck arrives, he enters his office to find it empty, and is helped along by his trusty friend – Dwight Schrute to help him find his new office.  After a good 5-10 minutes of looking, and walking the 3^rd floor, as the clues directed, he was unable to locate his office.  After a helpful hint from members of the BOSS team, he was able to find his new “workspace”.  The unfortunate lack of power in the sky bridge will require his move back to normal office life sooner than he would have hoped, but at least for a day, he will have the largest, most spacious office, with the best view in all of RTC!

-Ryan

Too Much Free Time

                            

I think the best part about this office prank is the simplicity: one (1) person out on vacation for a week + five (5) boxes of saran wrap (one of which is press-n-seal) + five or six people to wrap every individual item on her desk = 20 fun filled minutes and some pictures to enjoy. Why saran wrap? You know, for freshness. Plus, we thought Mary would appreciate having dust-free equipment when she returned.

But what made this prank stand out was the press-n-seal. That stuff rocks. As you can see from the pictures, we spread out the smaller items and "sealed" each to her desk surface, each with it's own little air pocket. Then we wrapped her chair, monitor, lamp, wall calendar, books and binders, file cabinets and anything else not fastened to the floor, in plastic.

It was a team effort, and for a change -- there was no permanent damage! (That'll be in my commitments) Another advantage to this prank: Mary sent out an email to the team offering extra saran wrap to anyone who might have leftovers from lunch. Very thoughtful, I have to say.

Here's a few more pics:

                          

Pranked, De-pranked, Re-pranked in RTC

                                 

I've learned a lot about office hijinx these last few months here in Ad Support: for one, read the label on the cans of dollar store silly string, and maybe test the stuff out on a hidden corner of furniture, because the stuff stains. Which means your team will incur some expense to repaint, and you'll spend a weekend or two scrubbing your peer's desk with Magic Erasers (which really are magic, btw).

So this time around, we needed to do something that wouldn't cause any permanent damage. The target = a manager on a 6 week paternity leave. The prank? To fill his desk with as many stuffed animals as possible, with no help to remove the bounty after he returned.

With the target on vacation in early December, emails started circulating asking for donations, and a small pile of animals began to appear on his desk. All was going as planned. And then came the boneheaded move by someone in a partner team -- the person emailed the target asking where to drop off the donated stuffed animals. Doh!

Within the hour, the target, being the dedicated employee that he is (workaholic) forwarded the email to me (of all people!) asking what the person was talking about. I denied any knowledge of the prank, of course.

As we sat and deliberated on our options, someone can up with a great idea -- remove any signs of the prank, allow the target to return from vacation and find his office clean, and then hit him a week later when his guard was fully down. We agreed, quickly found a temporary home for the loot in another office (Thanks Todd!), and tried to get the word out to everyone to stay quiet.

The day he was back in the office, it was obvious that he expected some kind of prank, and was a little disappointed that nothing had been done to his space. I passed by his office and casually said hello, and he asked me again about the stuffed animals - because apparently people had come by asking where all of the animals had gone (c'mon, people!). On the spot, I made up a story detailing how we had used his vacant office as a staging area to collect stuffed animals for charity, and people must have misinterpreted it as a prank of some kind. He bought it.

So two days later when we hit, he was completely thrown off guard. He went to lunch, and we struck. We pranked him, we de-pranked him, and then re-pranked him. And hey, no permanent damage to Microsoft property! Bonus!          

Pretty in Pink

Forwarded by Leigh Watson through the hey-genius! forums, here's another great example of office hijinx (sp?) here at Microsoft. I especially like the children's big wheel, and the good use of multiple pink feather boas. (I'm envious -- I have just the one green feather boa)

Side note: I'm sure if you dug further into the psyche of the people who pulled this off, you'd find deeply rooted emotional issues. I suspect some sort of Barbie-related trauma. And I'm sure some of these items were not purchased for this prank, but came from personal collections. I'm just saying... 

  

Creative Decorating

No matter how hard-working and close-knit your team is, there comes a time when somebody reaches their limit -- and goes on vacation. Push yourself away from the table, my friends, because you are intellectually full. It's time to get away, enjoy some time with your family and friends, and take a well-deserved break.

                    And that's when your teammates turn on you.

You might return to find your desk and workstation covered in a couple thousand post-it notes.

Or you might find yourself digging through five 24-roll packs of toilet paper just to find your desk.

 

Feeding on your strong dislike for cats, they might find it funny to place pictures of cats throughout your office, and set you up with a nice little cat bed, toy and cat food, plus a kitty litter box complete with fake poop, lovingly crafted out of tootsie rolls (at least they tasted like tootsie rolls). 

But what is better than coming back to work to find your desk covered with gift-wrapped presents? Good luck finding your stapler.

Beware the vacations, folks. Don't fall into the trap. Because if you do, you might get hit. And then things will start escalating, productivity will suffer, and stockholders will start to get nervous. Bill and Steve will have to start making regular statements to the press to calm everyone, but the stock market will still take a nosedive. At that point, the federal government will get involved, declare Marshall law, and relinquish many of our rights -- all because of your selfish 3-day trip to Disneyland. 

It's just not worth it, people. Just plan on working 7x24...  

Redmond Town Center gets Starbucks Coffee

Not that I drink coffee, but apparently the building is in some caffeine induced hysteria after having the automatic Starbucks machines installed.  I went to investigate these little machines of wisdom and would like someone to explain what left coffee is and what right coffee is.  Is it for personality types?  Leaded and unleaded?   Or is it some sort of weird conspiracy set forth by Haley Bopp comet enthusiasts that did NOT drink the koolaid.  I wonder if in prehistoric times the common man had to make such decisions as to pick the right or left coffee.  Perhaps his dilemmas were much more animalistic.  Which piece of dried yak carcass should I eat?   One may never know.

Halloween on Campus

              

I was expecting a grand display of Halloween celebration, but was sadly disappointed. Maybe I'm just hanging around in the wrong buildings, but people just weren't dressing up. What's up with that? Then again, I love Halloween and always tend to go a bit overboard. Last year I was the weird mullet guy -- I wore a skin tight turtle neck sweater, gray slacks pulled up over my belly, and big brown shoes. With a mullet. I wasn't trying to "be" anything. My goal was just to make people feel uncomfortable around me, and I achieved that goal.

This year I borrowed a friends pimp/disco outfit and wig, and turned my windowless office into a discotech, with fog machine, two pulsating/spinning light effets, and blaring BeeGees/ABBA tunes throughout the day. You know it, baby.

Video: Halloween at Microsoft