The Hunger Games (Office Edition)

The Hunger Games was one of my favorite books in recent years. I pretty much read the book in one weekend and read the rest of the trilogy in less than a week. When the movies came out, I had to see them all.

It occurred to me not long ago that the workplace has a lot in common with The Hunger Games.

Either Over the Top or Don’t Give a Damn

In the Hunger Games the Districts were mostly impoverished, working-class communities that toiled for the benefit of everyone else while they had very little for themselves, not unlike most of us who work for a living. In the Capitol, people benefited from the work done in the Districts and the citizens dressed garishly.

I’m sure if you look around your workplace, you’ll find a version of this.

There are the ones who don’t give a damn. They look like they’ve given up on life in general. Casual dress code for them means rolling out of bed and (maybe) finding something clean on the floor to put on. Their fashion choices say, “I’m really resentful that this work thing has interrupted my two o’clock siesta.”

Then there’s the other extreme. You know who they are. Dressing to impress like a peacock in mating season.

Their makeup choice says, “I don’t give a damn if my eyebrows look like they were painted on with a sharpie. I’m going to answer the phone looking permanently surprised.”

Let Them Eat Cake

If you want to watch your coworkers reduced to the lowest common denominator, just announce that there’s food in the break area.

It’s ruthless and traumatic. If you try to get some for yourself, you may not survive.

My advice: take something sharp with you and be prepared to use it. It doesn’t matter that we live in a first world country. People act like they haven’t eaten in three days.

If you want to start a khaki stampede, just send a mass email to an office full of people with “cake” in the subject line.

Training

In the Hunger Games, the training can never adequately prepare you for the actual Games. In real life, no amount of training can prepare you for your actual job.

In my training, I learned about policies and procedures, workflows, phone scripts, templates, and systems. I learned scenarios where I got to role play and pretend I was in a given situation, then I was peppered with suggestions on how to handle it. However, nobody prepared me for an irate customer screaming obscenities at me like I’m watching a Comedy Central roast on TV. At least then, I get to laugh out loud.

Training also doesn’t prepare you for special projects, none of which ever seem very desirable. At least to me. We’ve all had that moment in team meetings when some special assignment is announced and if you volunteer, you’ll be expected to keep your current workload in addition to the added assignment.

Thankfully, just as in The Hunger Games, there’s usually someone willing to “volunteer as tribute” and take the hit for the team.

Let me be clear. I have never been this person.

Care Packages

In The Hunger Games, if a viewer liked a particular contestant, they would sponsor a special gift to be dropped into the Games just for that person. These gifts consisted of things like bandages, food, and other supplies.

In the employment world, the equivalent of this is the special delivery in the lobby.

Don’t lie. You’ve felt that twinge of jealousy when somebody gets a phone call about a delivery in the lobby and they do the walk down the aisle to the stairs like John Travolta carrying a can of paint home from work in Saturday Night Fever.

They do it because they know they’re special. You do it too. Admit it.

Then when they return, it’s like the first caveman who discovered fire. All the other cavemen gather around to grunt and screech and admire this new element to their environment. It doesn’t matter if it’s a bouquet of flowers, balloons, or just a large, mysterious manila envelope.

The recipient must always make a production. Sure, they pretend to blush when everybody starts asking, “Who is THAT from?” and they act demure and slightly embarrassed. But watch carefully.

They did the hustle out to the lobby, but the walk back is a damned processional, complete with organ music and a slow cadence back to the cubicle. A ninety-second walk OUT to the lobby has now become a ten-minute entrance to pomp and circumstance.

“Celebrate me!”

Then, the final gesture, as the proud bearer of flowers/balloons/candy arrives back at their cubicle, someone always shouts, “Let’s see what ya got!”

Like, were you not paying attention, Susan? Did you not just see her enter like a bride to a cathedral, with a thirty-foot train and ten flower girls? Was that slow motion walk too quick for you to see the Teleflora monstrosity that will now take over half a cubicle? I mean it’s hard to miss. It’s the size of a damned Texas Homecoming Mum!

But of course, the gift recipient will always indulge the one looky-loo who couldn’t quite see the flower bed they just dragged up the escalator and down the row to their cubicle. The next thing you know, they are Rafiki and the bouquet is the future Lion King.

We all bow to your glory!

It’s Brutal

In The Hunger Games, the object of the game was to survive in a hostile environment while killing your opponents until you’re the last one left.

Not unlike Corporate America.

Let’s face it. A corporate office is very hostile to human life. The fluorescent lighting. The carpal-tunnel-inducing chairs, desks, and computer keyboards. Bad coffee. Cubicles that resemble solitary confinement cells.

Conference calls.

It’s inhumane.

Then you must survive your coworkers. I’m lucky because I work with a pretty good bunch of people, but there are always the ones you have to watch out for.

You know who I’m talking about. The ones who would throw their own grandma under the bus to get ahead.

You bitches know who you are.

Then there is the one who is relatively harmless, but disturbingly annoying. The one with a high-pitched, squealy voice that talks to everyone like they’re five years old. The one who makes “Sir” or “Ma’am” sound patronizing. The one who pisses off everybody they talk to. The one whose telephone tone makes you want to leap over the cubicle wall and land on them like bird crap on a statue.

I’m not bitter or anything.

Everyone Is Watching You

In The Hunger Games, the games are televised. There are hidden cameras everywhere so that everyone in the Districts can watch all the action 24/7.

Corporate America is just like this now. Your workstation and phone can be and sometimes are monitored for every little thing you do. They can see what internet sites you’ve pulled up, which files you’ve accessed, and what numbers you’ve called out on. They keep track of how long your phone calls last, and more importantly, how much time you take between a call and logging back in to be ready for another call.

As if that wasn’t enough, they now must schedule your every waking moment, down to the minute. They tell you when to be on the phone, when to handle other tasks, when to take your two fifteen-minute breaks, and when to go to lunch.

I’m just waiting for the day when I get an IM from some mysterious entity demanding to know what I was doing.

“Kat,” says the entity, “we noticed you were away from your desk for 3.2 minutes. You weren’t scheduled for a break.”

“Well, um, yeah…I kind of had an emergency.”

“What kind of emergency?”

“Ummm…a bathroom emergency?”

“Be specific, Kat. What kind of bathroom emergency? Was it a number one or number two emergency?”

“Uhhhhh…number one?”

“That’s impossible,” the entity says. “You’ve only consumed five ounces of liquid since your shift started ninety minutes ago. By our calculation, you shouldn’t need to urinate for another twenty minutes, fifty-three seconds.”

“How do you know how much liquid I’ve consumed?”

“Your desk is also a scale. We can measure anything sitting on its surface.”

“Really?”

“Yes. There’s a scale in your chair as well. Would you like to know how much you weigh today?”

“NO, THAT’S OKAY!”

Not Too Real Reality T.V.

In the Hunger Games, a garishly dressed host would interview the heavily coached contestants in the days leading up to the Games. Everything was painted as being fun, exciting, and even an honor for those about to take part, even though they were chosen at random and forced to participate.

That’s kind of like the videos we’re always forced to watch about how some new process or procedure is going to make our lives so much better, but really, it’s just one more way to make life more miserable and difficult.

You know the ones. They show some voluntold employee sitting at a desk that you know doesn’t belong to anyone because it’s bare and the computer isn’t even plugged in. The participant is very well polished and just the right amount of perky and they do a great job reciting the pros of whatever clusterfuck the company is pushing this week.

You know damned good and well that behind the scenes, there’s an old man waving the poor schlep’s retirement benefits on the end of a fishing pole yelling, “Ooooh! You almost had it!”