i ate a whole dog

Office Games

// JRad // August 23rd, 2010 // Jrad's Blog

The floor I work on at work is pretty quiet during the day. Most of the guys show little to no interest in us poor newbies. Most of the people tend to keep to themselves. There is little banter going on and when you do speak you know it’s well within earshot of at least half a dozen other people who are sitting there in silence, judging your every word. There is however one behaviour that my colleagues intermittently engage in, which completely contradicts the usual sombre office feel. I witnessed this the first day as I sat at my desk trying to settle in. Out of seemingly nowhere a ball whooshed past my head at damn near the speed of sound. Inside the office. What the? What’s going on here I thought? It just missed another guy and bounced off a wall, making a great racket and onto the floor. Then nothing. Everything back to normal. Had I perhaps hallucinated this flying round object? Was the pressure of the new job taking a heavy toll on me? Maybe. But, that ball was real.

If you were to walk around on our floor and take notice of the surroundings, besides the usual office stuff, you would see multiple balls, strewn about on the floor and desks. Some are small like a stress-ball, others are as large as a cantaloupe. A big, soft, sponge filled cantaloupe. You see it turns out there is a game going on (not sure if there is a name for this game or not) whereby, at any time of the day or night, if you wish to hurl a ball at your work mate’s head as they sit unsuspectingly at their desk or perhaps walk past on their way to the photocopier, you can. Yep. Just throw a ball at someone, as long as they don’t sit in your pod or right next to your pod. This means you need to have a good aim, for if you hit a girl, you will instantly face the “firing squad”. The firing squad is exactly that. You stand against a wall while everyone bombards you with the balls, including the girl that was hit. It’s epic.

One morning the office was deadly quiet, when all of the sudden a ball was thrown, accidentally hitting one of the girls. After her shriek, it was on. Firing squad. Half the people around me got up and took position; others just wandered out of their pods to watch the punishment be served. After a few seconds of pummelling, everyone just as quickly went back to his or her desk. Silence again. As quickly as it started, it stopped and it was like nothing had ever happened. My fellow new starter and I just sat looking at each other, half in disbelief, half in delighted happiness. And that is how our office works.