Somehow, today didn't make me feel any better about this relocation crap.

I know it's not going to SOUND draining, but today was a massive SimCompany field trip to SimParentCompany's main campus - our soon-to-be new "home".

The Journey

We boarded the buses - 6 of them, I believe - at 9:15 AM, and left at 9:30. We got to the new offices at 10:47. Not so bad, many of us thought. Traffic didn't really seem to be an issue. Strange.

On boarding the bus, Hunter was loudly beckoned by the execs to the row in front of them. Honestly, I couldn't tell if their attention to him was intended to be flattering or derogatory, since they spent half the time laughing with him and the other half laughing at him. Sigh.

It was a little surreal to play Punchbuggies in the back of a bus with the company executives, but then again, what about this experience hasn't been surreal?

Upon arriving, we filed into what will be our building. The weather outside was dismal - grey, drizzly, cold, and gusty. We were greeted by an annoying woman who said "Hi. I'll be facilitating this group. You can eat at the cafe here [note: not free!] or just sit in the game room until the meeting at 11."

Some welcome to our new home. They were treating us like a big bunch of annoying outsiders and not new co-workers.

The Presentation (aka "Foot? Mouth? Could you maybe take it outside?")

It wasn't really 11:15 or 11:30 before we were finally led into the auditorium - we spent the time before that generally milling around uncomfortably and being ignored.

While waiting in line to enter the theatre, an old grad school friend Cory came up to say hi to Hunter and I. It was good to see a friendly face in this otherwise depressing atmosphere. We promised to hook up again once the move was over. But then another surprise visitor showed up - Ben, also from our grad program and a former SimCompany intern.

Once Ben had left, Hunter's boss BigT got quite irate, which was quite amusing. Ben was on the SimSequel team under BigT, and BigT *hated* him. Ben has this unfortunate problem where he stalks everyone indiscriminately. He'll just walk into your office and stand behind you as you work, NOT SAYING ANYTHING and reading over your shoulder. He even did this to BigT! Anyway, BigT was pretty pissed to find out that Ben had been offered an internship with SimParentCompany.

Inside the auditorium, there was a printed "SimParentCompany Campus welcomes SimCompany," and a very cheesy 3D extruded text version of the same message on a projection screen. They were playing some bad fake techno beat in an effort to get us "pumped".

Once we had all crammed into the auditorium - all 300 of us - the lights dimmed, and we were subjected to an embarassing 10-minute montage of ad footage from TV ads for our games - which we have all seen a million times, trust me. [Some people remarked that this was being shown to remind the bigwigs in attendance about what products we made.] The montage was all the more bizarre since 99% of us never have anything to do with the TV ads, so it's not like they were showing off our high-quality work or anything. To top things off, the whole video was set to the same 2-second bad techno loop.

After what seemed like 4,000 years, the lights came back up, and we applauded half-heartedly as the bad 3D text message returned to the screen. At that point, the CEO of SimParentCompany took the stage. He gave a tastefully somber brief speech that seemed appropriately apologetic for moving us, but thanked us for the work we've done -- blah blah SimCompany is dying blah blah.

That was as good as the presentation got.

Then they brought on the HR head, who was not impressive at all. He seemed more concerned with the impact our arrival would have on the other people on the campus than the impact the move was having on our own company culture and our own lives.

And then came BB. Oh, BB. BB is the "Chief Creative Officer" of SimParentCompany. A founding member of the company, in fact. You may ask, "What does a CCO do?" If you asked that, I would tell you "Wanders around and generally causes trouble, occasionally offering insight."

While our CEO was dressed nicely in suitpants and a nice shirt, and the HR guy was going for a more Queer Eye look, BB went for a dumpy yet overly tight-fitting black hooded sweatshirt and old jeans. He took the mic from the HR dude and introduced himself, explaining "I invited myself here to come and say a few words."

If you were watching the CEO at that moment, you might have noticed a slight cringe.

To BB's credit, he seemed genuinely happy to be having us coming to the main campus. The funny thing about BB is that he really does like what SimCompany does. He created an award for SimParentCompany innovation back in 2000, and that award has only ever been presented to SimCompany products. All of our PC products since that year, in fact.

In essence, if BB had just stopped there, the whole thing might have come off well.

But then came Q&A. Now, a lot of the SimCompany people have never worked for a big company before, and they're a little...idealistic. So some of the questions were downright naieve. Some were stupid - I think the engineers asked every possible permutation of the question "Will you feed us?"

But then one [admittedly unpopular] SimSequel engineer asked, "How big will the personal spaces be in the new space?"

BB replied, loud and clear, "Well, if everyone's as big as you we're going to have to get bigger cubes!"

The entire room cringed at BB's clearly over-the-line response. This engineer is admittedly somewhat overweight but that response was just completely and totally RUDE.

Later on, someone asked some kind of question, I forget what - but BB responded with "...And I think that [your] art department clearly needs to learn a lot from [the FootballGame team] about animation."

Daaaayam.

At that comment, the entire Art department almost got up and walked right out of the meeting -with good reason! Here they are, being asked to uproot our lives, and then they're insulted!

Most of us left that meeting muttering, "Gee, the best way to make people feel welcome is to insult them and their work!" That meeting did not do ANYTHING to make us feel like we were being treated with respect or care.

"Cheap-Ass Picnic Lunch"

Then we were treated to a "buffet picnic lunch" (read: crappy burgers, potato salad, and stale cookies) in the dining atrium.

I was sitting at lunch with Hunter and our bosses when BB graced our table with his presence, presumably to say hello to our bosses who are Important People. Hunter's boss BigT positively exuded tact and subtlety as he told BB that he had managed to insult our entire Art Department. BB casually mentioned that one of them had approached him, and BB clarified that he meant they needed help regarding animation blending techniques.

Yeah.

Anyway, major props to BigT for being so damned tactful about that. Good lord.

If any of you watch the Apprentice, the best way to describe BB's behavior is to compare him to the Asian girl who asked Steinbrenner about his "blinged out" hand and who called Regis Philbin "Phil." BB elicits the same sort of embarassment, even though he does often have solid ideas. He's very smart, but there is no WAITING ROOM in his head.

The thoughts just go straight from his brain to his mouth and into infamy.

Once lunch was over, we again spent almost an hour STANDING AND WAITING to be dealt with. We were supposed to go on guided tours, but there were no guides. We just wandered around the lobby.

[While I'm on the subject of the lobby, I'm frightened at how my company grows to resemble my grad program more and more with each passing day. The main receiving lobby is full of gratuitous lights and blue velour curtains uncannily similar to the purple velour decor we sported back in the day.]

D�noument

The tour was underwhelming, and it was ridiculously gray and windy outside. Foreboding, perhaps? The most entertaining moment was when BigT muttered "freak!" under his breath when Ben walked by. Seeing your superiors act juvenile never gets old.

The actual space we'll be moving into is a bizarre hybrid of my old design firm [which I liked] and Wean Hall, the all-concrete CS building at my alma mater [which I despised.]

So we'll see how THAT turns out.

At the end of the highly-draining day, we boarded the bus again, grabbed some beers (which had been placed in large tubs in the front seat of each bus) and hunkered down for the trip home. Little did we know that, even after leaving at 3 PM, the ride home would take TWO HOURS and 15 minutes. It wasn't even rush hour!

So much for a reasonable commute.

---

In the end, we're no more excited about the move - perhaps even less so. The new space, while it is supposed to appear "cool", ends up reading very clearly as "a desperate facsimile of what is cool on paper."

The whole experience seems like some sort of bizarre fable to me. "They do good work alone, so we'll bring them into a stifling environment closer to us and of course things will work out!" I'm not stupid, and I know this is "how business works." But I just can't see how this is going to end up ensuring more quality games for SimParentCompany.

"Once upon a time, there was a squirrel and a Sasquatch. The squirrel was well-liked and very good at gathering food. The Sasquatch was big and strong but nearsighted, so he could not gather food. One day, the Sasquatch offered to help the squirrel make its way through the forest. The squirrel agreed, eager for the help and protection. The two worked together for a long time: the squirrel gave all of the nuts he didn't eat to the Sasquatch, and the Sasquatch carried the squirrel when the forest got dangerous. The agreement seemed to work well for everyone.

One day, the Sasquatch decided that it would be better for the two of them to return to the Sasquatch's native Northern lands. How happy he would be with the squirrel to find him food! He grabbed the squirrel up and walked him back to the North, distracted with daydreams of many more successful years. But when the Sasquatch arrived in the cold lands, he found that the squirrel had frozen to death during the long journey, and would gather nuts no more."

Rest in peace, little squirrel. [Alright, so I'm no Aesop. Shuddupalready. :P]

Happy Friday the 13th. :(