Team spirit

While we’re still in the Christmas season (up until 6 January, in the Western Church), I’m going to share some pix of my office decked out for the holidays.

It started when one team put up a little decorated fake tree and some fairy lights on the table in the middle of their work space. The SVP took notice and announced at the weekly business unit call that the rest of us really ought to get with the program—she didn’t care what holiday theme we chose (“I’m fine with Festivus for the rest of us.”), but she really wanted to see what we’ve got.

Sadly, my team is geographically dispersed; there’s only my manager and me in this office, and he’s not into this kind of frivolity. But I got together with someone who sits in the same area on a Saturday. We hung strings of star lights from the ceiling, and covered the front of the area with gift wrapping. Frankly, it struck me as a West Texas trailer park Christmas, but by God it was colorful.

Well, that seemed to spur the original group (I’ll call them Team Ginger) to greater heights of creativity, and suddenly everyone was all over it. I knew shit was getting real when I saw several teams giving specifications for monitors to the facilities guy. Viz:

The group I’ll refer to as Team Gruber started out kind of slow. They jury-rigged a Raspberry Pi to the monitor that faces their work area, and for most of December it showed Li’l Bub (RIP) in front of the yule fire:

  

Then they hung up some lights (which I unaccountably do not have a photo of) and Christmas cat stickers, along with this:

There was also this solo effort by one of them—she pointed out to me that it’s meant to be a Christmas tree:

Complete with angel topper:

(They also had another tree.)

And their dinosaur was seasonably attired:

Other teams took a broader holiday view:

And made do with found materials:

This photo does not do justice to one group’s lights; I really liked them—looked like what you see down at the Marina for the parade of sailboats.

Others were more pedestrian, though festive, to be sure:

  

And then there was this nice try:

The SVP got into the act—she brought in the Pro from Dover (one of her kids) and hung lights and snow-sprayed the glass wall on her office. (No photo.)

But there were three exceptional efforts.

Team Enterprise boldly went where no one had gone before:

It included this galactic confection.

I was kind of surprised that the facilities guy wasn’t worried about fire hazards. (And I don’t know who’s going to pay December’s electric bill, but I hope someone warns them.) But as far as I know there were no incidents.

Team Ginger apparently pooled their not inconsiderable intellects after seeing the West Texas trailer park and upped the ante—I came across the office manager on her way to inspect the final product; she said the only thing she knew about it was a box of UPS delivery. But this is what they did:

The table in the center is what started everything out:

Another monitor put to use:

And here’s the special visitor who judged all the efforts:

Team Ginger won, of course, but my favorite was Team Gruber. From their somewhat small-scale and individual efforts (above), they built out the entire ecosystem of Die Hard:

(Yes, another monitor put to use.)

Complete with a real gingerbread Nakatomi Plaza tower, with flames and helicopter (I’m not kidding—it smelled wonderful, and I’m not even the world’s biggest fan of gingerbread):

Gingerbread house was spectacular, of course, but seriously—for execution of theme, Team Gruber has my heart.

But here’s what’s so interesting to me: I’ve never worked in a place that had quite so much fun during the holidays. And the collaboration that underpinned the creativity is breathtaking. Closest I’ve ever come was a cube-decorating contest about five jobs ago. And that was strictly every one for themselves—no team effort at all. This one was all about pooling ideas and effort.

I asked around—the OTT decorating was new. But I suspect there’ll be more of it come December.

Yippee-ki-yay!