Strangest Work Expeirence Ever: Air Hockey Brawl

I have had a lot of weird experiences at my past jobs. I have been threatend, hit by trucks, thrown off of trucks, despised, loved, i've slept under my desk, and left meetings to throw up. Last week i was the strangest encounter ever.

Since last summer my team has played air hockey in the company game room pretty much every day at 2:30. It is a good mid day break, it allows my guys to blow off steam and take revenge on each other for indescretions or issues that have been building up for a long time. As a result, we get along, we don't fight, and when we do it is over quickly. It has been the best management tool I ever had.

Starting about three weeks ago we came into the game room and found a sign posted, "No Air Hockey Between 2-4 Tuesday to Thursday due to doubles pool tournament." We were floored, this really disrupted out day.

We contrived a few plans for revenge:

1. Exploding/Trick Cue Ball
2. Replace All Signs
3. Jimmy Hoffa the Pool Table Balls Into the Baylands Never to Be Seen Again

But...we are lazy, and busy, so we did nothing. We even modified our schedule to be respectful to avoid the anal, pansie pool players. I had a 10 AM meeting with my partner in crime, and part time employee, Pickle. I need to get a better nick name for him but this is all i can think of at 12 AM in the morning. I call Pickle part time because he dreams of painting and airhockey most of the day and gets his design work done in between.

Pickle goaded me into a game of air hockey. I am better than he is, but he works harder at it. He like to beat me and I find that if he wins I can get a little more work out of him. Sometimes though I have to whip his ass just to show him whose boss, i dirgress....

So there we are...at the game room at 10:50 Wednesday afternoon. There were four guys playing pool, which seemed odd and they had their eye on us soon as we started walking over. We ponied up to the table and it was unplugged.

The pool players smirked and turned around obviously thinking that they had made their point. Stupid is as stupid does so I plugged the baby in. I mean, who in the world would think that unplugging something would be a roadblock. I've been plugging in crap to outlets longer than i can remember. Matt looked at me, smilled and hit the coin entry to get her started.

One of the pool players holds up his arms like a policeman halting j-walkers in a small town and walks over to us with a concerned look on his face.

"Sorry guys, this is a tournament game, there is a sign here that says no pool during the tournament." He bends over to look for the sign on the side of the air hockey table. Now it was our time to smirk...we had deep sixed the sign weeks ago.

"Wait..well, there is supposed to be a sign here," Says the Air Hockey table cop.

I interject quickly, because I can see his confidence is slipping away and I wanted to get playing.

"The tournament is from 2-4...its a 11am..."

"Oh...this is a make up game,"

Now... that line was said assuming the following

1. I care
2. I might back down
3. I have any clue what he is talking about

So... i shrug my shoulders and move in a step closer towards the table... i mean come on. Get out of my way already. He's obviously not going to budge or say anything else. I had exhasuted my will to talk about the subject.

I had that feeling of lightheadedness I get before I really freak out.   I get a little dizzy. Its as if god is saying...ok, go nuts. It was deffinately the strangest work environment situtation i had ever been in. I coud feel it! I was going to get in a brawl in the game room over air hockey!  It was a trainwreck i couldn't stop.

Luckily... cooler heads prevailed. The Air Hockey cop interjected..."We would appreciate it if you let us finish our game."

Well, politness was just what the doctor ordered. All i could think of was, why didn't this fool say that in the first place. I was pretty pissed at this point though so I just turned around shook my head and left. This place is weird.