They Still Make These?

Shane and Evan asked to meet with me concerning the planning of a Christmas party for our entire group of IT Team members. I was excited to see what they had in mind. This was a really large (200+) group of people and would require some level of planning. The day of our scheduled meeting came and I quickly learned that they had already had a version of this same party last year. At the time of the party last year, they were both part of a smaller group of our IT team and the party was attended by about 40 people or so. The party was designed to cater to exactly what the team members liked to do at parties they attended outside of work. There were board games, role playing games, Nintendo video games, classic arcade games, card games and more. They didn’t have a lot of time to even have last years party. It needed to be finished, then cleaned up before the larger company party taking place that same afternoon. But, by all accounts, they did it and did it well! The feedback from the people attending was excellent. They told Evan that they had more fun at this party than any other company sponsored party they had ever attended!

I listened carefully because the feedback was real, it was extremely positive and it was important to me as a leader at my company to continue to support our mission to make our company a great place to work. Having “fun” is encouraged in our culture and it sure sounded like the team that attended this party last year had a great time. As we discussed details of the entertainment, it hit me … Pinball! Why not? Impulsively, I shared with them that I would bring 2 machines to the party if they thought the team might enjoy playing them. They said they were certain they would. So it was settled then. I’d bring a couple games from my collection on the assigned day.

We talked a bit more and quickly got into the pressing discussion of “the budget”. They didn’t have much. They needed more. We ran some numbers on what we might spend per person on food. We ran some numbers on what we could spend on a small gift per person. I totaled the numbers and we decided that I would meet with our SVP/CIO and get the green light for the spend.

That afternoon, I popped my head into his office (we see each other every day as I look through my glass wall right into his office where I sit at my desk) and shared the planned budget with him and asked if he was good with it. His response was better than “yes” … he encouraged me to spend what it took to “do it right”. He told me he wanted to create an event that said “thank you” for the fantastic year we had, based in large part to the effort the IT team members had put forth. In the end, we ended up spending more on food and refreshments to make the event something special.

Over the next 4 weeks or so, we held several planning sessions and got a ton of support from both the IT team and some other key people. One of those was Barbara. She is our CIO’s Executive Assistant, a wonderful individual and was very happy to give us a much needed hand in the food department. She worked with our internal restaurant/cafe team to build the menu and have the entire event catered. Shane and Evan worked on the gift during this time as well. Evan took the time to have each of the various IT groups pose for a funny/interesting team photo. He then took all the photos and had them placed on a paper desk calendar – one image for each month. They came back from the printer looking like a million bucks! We were all anxious to add a candy cane and see the look on our team mates faces as they received them. To be clear here … I did very little work in the entire process. It was a team effort led by Shane and Evan and they did a fantastic job as you’re about to see.

Now … on to Pinball. Fast forward to the evening before the party. I started to get nervous. I had seen others pack up machines for tournaments, trade shows, etc. I read about it all the time on Pinside. The difference this time was that it would be me alone moving these machines from my ranch about 30 minutes east to our corporate offices.

Unfortunately, the end of the year brings lots of loose ends and I ended up working late the evening that I was to pack the games up. I was prepping an important presentation for the President and had worked to a point that my leader was satisfied with it and was ready to hand it to the CIO. I rushed home and changed clothes in prep for the load up. I got a text from my boss around 6:30 pm saying that there were going to be a few tweaks needed to the presentation (there usually are – so no surprise here) and he would call me in a while. Around 7:30 pm he called and we discussed the changes. They would require a bit of time. We decided to meet around 7:00 am at the office and make the adjustments. With a good plan laid out for the presentation, I was finally able to start packing around 8:00 pm. As I packed, I went through a series of mental checks

• 4×4 post to use as brace when installing back legs – check
• Screw gun with 5/8^th socket end and spare battery – check
• Shrink wrap – check
• All the legs packed, balls, keys – check
• Extension cords – check
• Power strip – check
• Subwoofers – check
• Spare fuses – check
• 3 complete pinball games – check (Metallica Premium, Ghostbusters LE and Medieval Madness LE

I backed my truck up to my 12′ trailer and hauled it out of the woods near the pole barn where I keep it. I took a few minutes to brush off the old pine needles and dirt from the bed. This trailer gets used for everything from brush clean up to hauling fresh hay in the summer. Last week it was used for brush and dirt – it was a mess. When I went to crank up the tongue to back my hitch under it, the crank was stuck. I ran to the pole barn and grabbed some WD40 and in a minute or so I was back in business.

With the trailer in place, it was simply a matter of muscle and time to get the machines broken down, shrink wrapped, blanketed and strapped for transport. I purchased some Harbor Freight moving blankets the week prior to protect the cabinets. I have never used blankets when moving a pin before but these were newer titles and I did not want to risk damaging the decals. The blankets do a great job protecting the pins but do come with a couple of downsides. You can’t pick the pin up using the blankets. I tried. They rip. Every time. Also, once the pins are laid down on the trailer, you can’t skid or slide them into position on the trailer. Where you drop them is where they stay unless you lift the pin enough to take the weight off. I was loading them alone so I needed to carefully choreograph where I tilted them down onto the trailer bed.

Needless to say, it was pitch dark and about 11:00 pm when I finally got all 3 pinballs loaded onto the trailer. I was whipped tired but still had a few things to do. For one, it was going to get below freezing that evening and I sure didn’t want to leave the trailer outside all night. I opened the last bay of the pole barn and backed the whole thing in there and unhooked it for the night. I came back to the house, set the alarm for 5:00 am and hopped in bed.

The alarm seemed to go off right after I set it but somehow 6 hours had passed. I jumped in my truck, backed up to the trailer to hitch it up and headed off to work. I hit my desk at around 6:50 am and had the revised presentation completed by 8:00 am. We presented the updated presentation to the CIO who gave it the green light. It was a great meeting – but not for that reason. You see, our CIO started the meeting by asking each of us to pick a plain white envelope from a pile and pass it on. We did and then he explained the inside each envelope was a name of someone in the room. Our job was to write something nice about that person and then share it with the team. It was a really nice gesture and right in line with our company culture of “Making a Better Day” for others. The name I picked was his and it was nice to be able to share the “good things” he does as a leader in front of his team and in such a public way.

We also had breakfast served in our conference room, but not catered by someone but rather homemade by Barbara the IT Executive Assistant. It was amazing and what a thoughtful gesture. These 2 simple things made a very serious meeting (budgets and resources) so much more interesting and fun than it might otherwise have been. We closed out the meeting and by 10am, I was ready to begin the process of unloading the games I had just loaded less than 12 hours prior.

I headed out to where I had parked my truck and trailer and met Shane and Evan nearby. We began to organize the area, locate the best placement (they are noisy in a large/open room) and lay out the tools. Working with new folks puts some added responsibility on you as you work. For example, I asked one of my team mates to grab one leg and meet me at the front of MMR. He did, we then used the drill to put the legs on, then tilt the game down onto the newly installed front legs. When I went to lift the back onto my 4×4 post, the entire machine listed violently to one side. Oops – I forgot to tell him that I needed the FRONT leg. He grabbed one of the rears and with that leveler all the way out, we are lucky we didn’t tip the machine over! Nonetheless, with 3 of us working quickly, we had the games in the room and set up in under 2 hours. Nice to have the help!

We now had until 2 pm to get the room ready for our guests. We finished setting up the games and moved on to decorations, video games, board games and tying candy canes onto each of the desk calendars that would become Christmas Gifts in just a few hours. Pizza was delivered for lunch and we snacked as we worked. I met quite a few people that were “new to me” even though we work in the same department. The IT team is quite large and this party was already having one of its intended impacts – allowing people to get to know each other. Just before 2 pm I asked the Facility Maintenance team if they would “pressure test” the 3 games at the same time – to ensure the breaker would hold. They couldn’t get the smiles off their faces and were eager to “help”. The electrical supply held and we were a go for party time!

The short version of the story is that the Pinball games were a “hit”. Most interesting for me was the variety of reasons that people were attracted to them.

Older team members

• “It’s been over 20 years since I played a Pinball”
• “Gosh I forgot how much fun this was”
• “I used to play a lot when I was a kid”

Younger team members

• “They still make these?”
• “Where do you buy one?”
• “I’ve never played one before”

Other comments came from a variety of age groups:

• “These are YOUR games?”
• “How many do you have?”
• “Where did you buy these?”

Favorite game? By a mile it was Ghostbusters. I warned all who played that it was the most challenging of the bunch. They ignored me. They lined up again and again to be brutalized by the the game. There is something about a popular theme. The game that generated the most smiles was MMRLE. It was the easiest of the 3 to play (and accomplish something very visible). For a while I stood beside it coaching players on the steps involved to blow up their first castle. Watching them accomplish that was priceless.

Players? There we a few – and I mean a few … 5 to be exact. My old boss used to play on the boardwalk in the old arcade days. My new boss played consistently when he was younger. Our Director of Infrastructure was impressive to say the least. Immediately able to cradle and aim for lit shots. Not sure where he learned but he had played extensively in the past and I watched him have a ball on Metallica. We have a newer team member who has some experience playing at our local barcade too. Finally, there was Robert who’s dad collects/restores machines. He grew up playing them so he knew his way around them as well. But that was it – out of almost 200 people, just 5 real “players”.

So did the rest of the people there have fun with them? Heck yea! It was interesting to watch people play or learn how to play who were brand new to pinball. I watched 2 of our newer team members playing Metallica and basically just banging the ball around. They were chimp flipping, not aiming at all and generally just trying to keep the ball alive as many new players do. I heard from Evan that they were about to leave the party when he asked if they had played Pinball yet. They said no and he convinced them to stay and try a game or two. I stood to the side and asked if they would like some pointers. They were literally the last 2 guests in the room, it was after 5pm and it seemed like they were interested in learning. They are MIT grads are always eager to learn something new. They asked me to show them and I stepped up to Metallica and demonstrated:

• Post pass flipper to flipper
• Backhanding the graveyard.
• Trapping the ball.
• Roll passing.
• Bounce passing

Then I let them take over. What a difference it made in just one game. They were now trapping and aiming where they had not before. They were accomplishing more in the game and genuinely having more fun because of it. I was like a proud teacher with an ace student. It’s nice to see people enjoy the game we love so much.

We ended the festivities with an ugly sweater contest and a raffle. The ugly sweater contest was fun and had more than a dozen participants. Exactly how does the IT team run an ugly sweater contest? Just the way you might think – there’s an app for that! The team sent everyone to a URL where they could vote for their favorite contestant using their mobile phones. Sweater/contestant #6 won in a landslide although I was rooting for the elf myself!

We gave away our raffle prizes and our CIO thanked everyone for their fantastic effort and a great year. Right before he finished saying his “thank-yous” he mentioned that all 3 pinball machines would be raffled off so everyone should hold their tickets. I laughed and stepped up to play along by saying “Sure thing, tickets are $1,000 each and I must sell 10 of them per machine”. We had a good laugh, dismissed everyone and just like that it was time to pack up and head home. Loading up went a little faster because both Evan and Shane were now experts and we acted as a finely tuned NASCAR pit crew. We were loaded within 90 minutes I was on the road in 92.

So what did I learn? I learned that even though I had read countless posts on Pinside from others who had done this hundreds of times before me it just not the same as “doing it yourself”. The effort was tremendous. It was hard. It was painful. It was challenging. I required a lot of time. It was hard. Did I say it was hard? It was. And … I would do it again. It was so nice to see people enjoy the game we love and sometimes take for granted. Not everyone wants to spend $10,000 on what is essentially a toy and being able to bring that fun to them was priceless. It was surprising to hear the same comment over and over throughout the entire event “thanks so much for bringing your pinball games!”. I must have heard that statement or a variation of it 100 times. People sensed the effort involved and appreciated it. Finally, I learned that just a few people who care for others can make a difference. Barbara showed me that with the fantastic homemade breakfast. Our CIO demonstrated that with the “say something nice” staff meeting exercise. Shane and Evan showed all of us that with their heart for others. Their idea turned into one of the best Christmas parties we’ve ever had.

Team members were gushing about the party immediately after it was over. One of our Directors shared that he heard a team member say they were not sure they would even come, but decided to show up anyway, only to stay and then share (unsolicited) how much fun they had. Other comments were “This was so much fun” to just plain “Wow!”. Some commented it was the best IT party ever and others showed their appreciation not with words but by staying until the very end. By all accounts we accomplished what we set out to do. Throw a party to say “thanks” for all that was accomplished in 2018 and in the end make a better day for all who attended.

Merry Christmas!

Prologue: Today is Saturday Dec 22nd and with some help from Chris, I JUST got the Pinball machines unloaded from the trailer and back in the house. Pulling them up 3 small steps still requires another helper!