Rock, Paper, Scissors: Four Years Later
A long, long time ago (way back in 2004), we used to have this particularly boring task at the workplace. It was a menial task, an update that had no admins and required “manual” labor, as it were.
In order to determine who got the crap job… we settled on a Rock, Paper, Scissors contest. As there were three of us in the pool at the time (me, Ben and Chris), we had a decent system down. First round, it’s odd man out; second round, loser gets the job.
Fast forward to 2008. We have a different set of updates, again with no admin (yet) and requires a “manual” approach. There are markedly more of us now in the pool (Jane, Chris, Bryan, Allison, TJ, Nick and Masha), so the rules are changed up somewhat.
Bryan and Allison have been doing these updates for a long time now (about a year or so). Due to time served, they’re out of the running for the next two weeks. For the rest of us, we do two rounds of elimination, leaving two people to go head-to-head. At the final stage, it’s best out of three, loser gets the crap job.
We tend to do this after our Design Team meetings on Mondays, at the start of the week. This week, I was one of the finalists… but Chris was out sick. Today, we got our first update of the week, and so Chris and I needed to face off…
Sometimes there really is no better way to settle something or to mitigate tasks. Sorry you didn’t win :(
Ally (March 20, 2008 at 9:19 am)I’m sorry I missed the action. Even though I never want to be in the running again I definately miss the adrenaline rush of it.
ben (March 20, 2008 at 11:54 am)C’mon, Ben. What’s a little XML gonna cost you? The rush is totally worth the risk, if you ask me. Plus – your addition to the pool of players lessens my chances of getting hit with the work.As an aside, Liz and I were at Lula’s last week, and when a chair at the bar opened up… I totally played Rock Paper Scissor with another guy nearby, and won.I love settling things with RPS. I always feel like such a kid afterwards.
avoision (March 20, 2008 at 1:23 pm)