Sometimes you just have to have a little fun. Nerf arms race, anyone?
A few days ago my developers explained that they were being randomly shot with nerf darts in their collocated cubicles by the QA tester. Next day, one of the mainframe developers picks up a nerf gun. The web developers were a little grumpy about being shot at. Manger must fix problem.
That involved stopping by Target on a lunch break and picking up three nice nerf guns including a Bazooka which shoots 60 feet in the air. I then snuck the munitions to the web developers and left them to their own devices. One of the three declared that he was only going to set his up in his cube as a deterrent. For the other two I think they had some fun sending a few darts and bazooka rounds over the cubes.
Even in corporate IT development shops it helps to relive a little dotcom fun. I still miss the foosball tables myself.
Tomorrow at the standup for this project I’ll have a simple explanation:
**“Yesterday, I fueled an arms race and provided nerf munitions to three web developers.”
“Today, I’ll be participating in a code review.”
“My impediment is I don’t feel comfortable submitting a nerf expense report to Finance.”
**