I love working for start ups and internet companies.  The company culture is so open and fun. People get along with each other better, and things are laid back. (Our CEO outlaws suits unless it is for a very very important client. He often likes to go to important meetings dressed down just to mess with people’s heads.)

My company would never be featured in one of the 10 coolest workspaces, nor do we have any awesome ball pits like last.fm. But we do have a small mini basketball court between the cubicals and frequently have cube warfare. (On a side note I always loved the commercial of people in the “Promotion Pit” fighting each other with office supplies. Somehow that just seems so much fun.)

Our cube warfare started out innocently enough. Two years ago some employees were given various nerf guns to let off some steam during our busy season. Then there was a short foray into marshmallow guns. Soon others joined into the fray with even more destructive guns. It is now all out war with interesting combat tactics to the high tech menace that I want to buy for my cube.

After loosing a lot of the nerf darts we then moved on to the most fun and distracting cube toy we have fund. The almighty FINGER ROCKETS! These things are so addicting. However, due to people being hit in the head while on the phone, we have now all been instructed to always have a hand on the MUTE button on our phone, so when getting hit by one of these we don’t shout “Oh Shit” to the customer. These things wiz by my head quite frequently.

Now company culture is incredibly important. If the culture doesn’t fit you, you may not fit in with your colleagues. A few weeks ago I was helping doing interviews for two new tech support people. I asked the usual questions (How many WPM?). I then realized that many of the people were new to the area and had never worked for an internet company. I then asked what type of company culture they were looking for and described our area and company culture to them.

One potential was like “Well I like talking with my co-workers and getting to know them at company events.” It was going nicely until he said “I like conversing with others but I don’t want to be distracted at work by idel talk. Its like…I don’t want things just wizing by me as I work.” I think he was meaning wizing as a metaphoricly, not literally. Well already things weren’t going in his favor (he just wasn’t a good fit for the position) when just then 5 nerf darts hit the conference window and stuck there.

Ah well. Now who wants to slip in slide in the parking lot?