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Online deal-finding site dealnews has been running a Cubicle Warfare feature, mixing pointers to cheap office warfare devices (like $2 Potato Guns) with a hilarious blow-by-blow narrative. Here’s a bit from the second installment, published yesterday fresh from the battlefield:
The necktied hordes from Personnel spill from the elevators. You call for the front line to unleash a barrage of smoke from their Zero Fog Blasters ($18 at CoolStuffCheap.com). The dense circles of smoke and fog obscure the attacking co-worker’s vision. You can smell the sweet cherry scent of the smoke — yes, the fog is scented like cherries — and smile, knowing that Personnel is accustomed to your floor smelling more like sweat, old electronics, and JOLT Cola. This additional layer of confusion will give you an all-too-precious split-second pause in their advances.
Smitty, your second-in-command, lobs a Sonic Grenade ($13 at ThinkGeek.com) into the oncoming attackers. The noise deafens the advancing combatants. Unfortunately, the screeching device has also deafened your own people.
Cubicle war is hell.
Read more: Cubicle Warfare and Cubicle Warfare II: This Time, It’s Personnel.
I have a Zero Blaster! It was a tradeshow giveaway that I acquired a few years ago. It was pretty cool in the beginning, but it’s lost some of its zip in its old age. Takes a long time to build up enough fog to shoot the rings. And it’s hard to find the oil for it. Fog machine oil usually comes in gallons, and that’s a little much to buy for the tiny oil hopper on a toy. But it’s still a great conversation piece in my edit suite.
posted by Bre on 12-4-2007 at 1:38 pm
I used to work at Google and the f*ckin engineers used to blast one of those Airzooka air guns ALL THE TIME. So irritating. Drove me freakin’ nuts. If you want to play around, have at it. But don’t involve people who don’t want to play your stupid reindeer games. I know I sound uptight, but those guys were the worst. No social skills.
posted by Erin on 12-4-2007 at 1:42 pm
giving my daughter’s boyfriend (in england) a nerf gun. she’s going over to see him for christmas. she’s gonna hate me!
posted by Shelly on 12-4-2007 at 1:48 pm
I used to work as an intern for the marketing department of a PR agency in NYC. Those people were crazy. They had tons of those fog-blaster things just lying around, but they were old school… their amusement was from the big bulletin board, my boss would post something and the design genius who was Puerto Rican would throw knives at it. Not like real knives, but those little exact-o things that were attached to a piece of metal so it’s sort of like a pen, but for cutting. It only matters that he’s Puerto Rican because once my boss posted the Vermont Teddy Bear’s Puerto Rican bear, complete with tattoos and a wife beater. He still threw knives at it.
posted by Kelly J on 12-4-2007 at 2:02 pm
What a gamut of weapons they have there! I bought the screaming monkey slingshot just because it’s so cool, and was only 7 bucks.
“Legend tells of a hero not born unto this world, but destined to change forever the course of human existence. A hero so grand that all past legends will turn to dust in the wake of his greatness. This is not that hero. This is, however, the next best thing: a monkey with a cape and a mask. Because nothing says power like a cape and a mask.”
posted by Johnny Cat on 12-4-2007 at 6:48 pm
Whatever happened to grass roots guerilla tactics? A few years back I worked in marketing for Big Ass Fans (yep, that’s the company name) and, due to space constraints, I had to share an office with my favorite Latter Day Saint, Dan. We pulled a lot of pranks and hit each other with a lot of stuff, however our weapon of choice were our company squeeze toys (tiny donkeys). I used the same one to regularly pelt Dan O with for about two months, until that rabid animal bit her head off and spit it back at me. The post was right…cubicle war is hell.
posted by Ben Hubbard on 12-5-2007 at 10:52 am