It's the Little Things

I learned the other day that a friend from one former employer is now working with another friend at another former employer (ye olde Electronic Arts), and though those two friends didn't know each other before, they do now and that makes me very happy.

They're both great people and will no doubt enjoy working together. Weird that both jobs where I met them feel like a lifetime ago, like a story I read years ago.

Part of that story from EA includes perhaps one of my proudest professional achievements. An achievement that still benefits the female EA employees to this day.

Once upon a time in the early days of the gaming industry, a little start up company named Electronic Arts wanted to build a new campus with fantastic amenities that included a sweet cafe/restaurant, a Club One-run gym, and actual locker rooms where one could shower after abusing the gym equipment (or the cafe).

Excited about our new home away from home, we went on a tour soon before it was finished to check out the beautiful lobbies with glass walls and gaming set ups for guests, and the huge gymnasium with a giant EA Sports logo painted on the boards.

After admiring the fine work in the gym, we proceeded into the locker room area. Still unfinished, it was large and really nice. Big, spacious lockers and plenty of room for many babes to clean up, change, dry the hair - everything.

And then my eye caught the large stainless steel box firmly installed on the wall near the toilets. With coin slots and pull levers, but it wasn't a million-dollar jackpot slot machine.

Oh no, this you see is where we were going to have to dig up a quarter to buy a tampon. A tampon that costs maybe a dime retail - I'm going to be charged for that when I just walked through a huge gym sporting an EAS logo? Really?

So, EA Sports gets not only their own, exclusive sports bar that the commoners are not allowed to use, they also get their own gymnasium and I have to pay for a fugging tampon? Again, really?

I was sooooooooo offended. Wouldn't you be? I was voicing my disbelief about this [shocking, I'm sure] and a friend of mine told me I should take it up with the VP of Facilities. Which is exactly what I did the moment I was back in front of my computer.

I sent him the very nicest, well-written email I knew how to write asking if sanitary products could be made available for free. I carefully outlined all the benefits that would be enjoyed by the employees as well as EA, making sure to tie it all into the main purpose of the new campus - provide everything we need so we never have to leave. Ever.

Maybe uncomfortable with the topic, he kicked it over to the CEO/Chairman who was refreshingly open to the idea and said Yes without any debate whatsoever. How wonderfully progressive is that?! A company run mostly by men, kicking down the free cotton ponies & pads.

Of course, I and all my girlie friends were ecstatic. Life went on and it was good. I enjoyed another few years there, never having to worry about getting caught off guard without change - that's a very nice thing.

I forgot all about it until this week when my friend who just started at EA confirmed that yes, sanitary products are still available for free in the bathrooms. I couldn't be more proud.

Working for Uncle Ben

My other half joined the Family Lucas this week and is a producer on an upcoming blockbuster game. All that BS at his last job was a wonderful gift. Had that not happened, he may not have thought about moving on at this time, so, thanks guys!

We took a walk around the LucasArts campus last weekend and afterwards I told David it's been really nice and to write when he could. If I worked there I don't think I'd come home very often. It's a gorgeous place. Makes EA's "campus" look like a mental asylum, which it was some days, but mostly it was fun.

Our group had BBQ's in the parking lot with lots of sidewalk chalk and bizarre drawings; found giant blanket penises on chairs, courtesy of a fellow producer with an incredible gift for fabric origami; and created the [insert name here]-cam in the hallway so we could see when a particularly annoying product guy was on his way into our department; and then my favorite bit of shenanigans...

There was one guy in marketing who made it his job to ruin every day for me, to be a total pig asshole about everything, all the time. We used to call him Fred Flinstone because not only was he just as stupid as Fred, his head was just as block-shaped. One day I came back from meetings and told everyone what a total dick he'd been to me, again.

My coworkers were (and are) a fiercely loyal group, and if you mess with one of us, you've messed with all of us. They'd become as fed up as I was at how this guy was treating me and our group's role on projects. They consoled me and I felt better for having such good people around me, then I headed home.

The next day I came in and heard a wonderful story about Fred's sudden computer trouble. Fred came in that morning and fired up his machine and instead of seeing the classic Farrah Fawcett poster on his desktop, he saw a gorgeous, sweaty gay porn model wearing only a towel - over his shoulder.

And all of his desktop files had been renamed to things like NAMBLA, men_on_men, and so on. Things that would surely disturb this block-headed, homophobic, MCP.

Confounded by the state of his computer, he called IT to "fix" it. He didn't realize all the changes were cosmetic and he may have hoped IT could find out who played the prank. While IT combed through his files to see what was accessed and how, they found a certain pornographic story that had been accessed at the same time the changes were made.

When Fred realized his dirty little secret wasn't secret anymore, he backed off on the idea of lodging a complaint. But he did come by our department on the verge of tears to demand that our programmers be punished, which of course they weren't, because all they'd done is balance out the karma a little. It was one of the best days ever.

After he left we read his story - which we'll never know if he downloaded or tried to write - and it was so bad, we cried from laughing. I mean, if he wrote it, good for him for trying, but on your WORK computer? That was our Fred. If he didn't write it, whoa. Just because it's online doesn't mean it should be downloaded.