You can turn an office into a game show, but you can't make everyone play

SAM DINGMAN: Back in my life before radio, I worked at a tech company — like a BIG tech company, one you’ve definitely heard of, and probably use every day. I had no business working at this tech company.

You know those old Charlie Brown cartoons, where the teacher in the classroom would talk, and it would sound like a broken trombone?

[CLIP FROM A "PEANUTS" CARTOON PLAYS]

That’s literally what I felt like sitting in meetings about the build pipeline for ad pixel insertion.

But — and I say this with deep respect for the work that software engineers do — there was this one skill I did have that most of them did not: talking to people.

And that’s the reason, as near as I can tell, that I never got fired from this job. My title was administrative business partner, but really, I think they kept me around to try to get this group of software engineers to step away from their code and interact.

I had a lot of ways I went about this: I put together board game nights. I took them bowling. One time I hired a magician to come in and teach everyone card tricks, so they could learn the power of patter.

But these one-off events … they didn’t really have much of an impact. I could convince people to step away from their desks for an hour or two every couple months, but that wasn’t going to encourage them to proactively seek each other out.

So one day, I had an idea. Our team sat on the 10th floor of this office building, and there was a big empty conference room with glass walls that looked out over a river. And since I spent a lot of the time that I worked in this office wishing I was at a bar instead, I thought: What if we put a bar in there?

I had seen these engineers cut loose a little bit once they had a rum and Coke at the bowling alley. Maybe if the proper social lubricant was available right here in the office, they would feel like they could wander in, mix themselves a drink and talk to each other about … whatever it was they did.

My boss told me to go for it, and I threw myself into the project. I got the facilities team to install this beautiful oak bar. I loaded it up with glassware, and I picked out mid-century modern chairs and sofas that matched the colors of the company logo.

When I was done, I sent out an email bursting with "Mad Men" quotes, inviting everybody to the grand opening. And when the big night arrived — nobody showed up.

So I poured myself a drink, looked out the window, and wondered what exactly I was doing at this company.

I thought about that night a few months ago, when I met Jennifer Jewett. She’s a game show host.

JENNIFER JEWETT: All right guys, put your hands together and make some noise! It’s time for another prime-time showdown! Let’s meet our teams! In the corner … 

DINGMAN: I should clarify slightly: Jennifer works at this place in Chandler called Game Show Battle Rooms. They do custom game show-style events for groups — think "The Price is Right" or "Family Feud," but with your co-workers.

Jennifer is the director of operations, but she also likes host the game shows. One of the things she enjoys, she told me, is watching people come out of their shells.

Sam Dingman

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KJZZ

JEWETT: You know, you’ve got Tim, who maybe sits in his cubicle all the time, who might not participate, and all of a sudden Tim is the most competitive person you’ve ever seen in your life. In fact, if he does not win this game, there is going to be a price to pay. And you can see it in Tim’s eyes, you can see it in the way he acts and the way he’s yelling and screaming throughout the game. 

DINGMAN: Jennifer used to be an operations director at a fast food restaurant, but when she found out about this job, she knew she had to go for it.

JEWETT: I’ve been on four game shows myself, and so when I saw this ad come up for this, I said, "Oh my gosh." It was literally the best thing I’ve ever done, was be on a game show, in my whole life. 

DINGMAN: It all started when she was a little kid here in Phoenix, and her Brownie troop went to a taping of "The Wallace and Ladmo Show" — a kids TV show that ran for decades here in the Valley. If you won one of the contests on Wallace and Ladmo, you got something called a Ladmo Bag as a prize.

[CLIP FROM "WALLACE AND LADMO" PLAYS]

And the day Jennifer went to the taping — she got one.

JEWETT: It still, like, gives me the chills, because it was so life-changing. I think it was the sense of being chosen.

DINGMAN: That was not the last time Jennifer experienced the life-changing power of game shows. As an adult, she was a contestant on a show called "The Match Game," and this time she won a much bigger prize.

JEWETT: I won $25,000, and before that I had some debt from a previous life that I was partaking in. And it changed my life because I was able to start over.

DINGMAN: The day I visited Game Show Battle Rooms, I watched Jennifer run a series of games for a group of employees at a mobile technology company. She changed into a sparkly jacket, and her co-host introduced her by her stage name.

CO-HOST: Make some more noise and make it very loud and proud for my girl over there, J-Money!

JEWETT: Hey guys! How’s it going? Now, I don’t know if you noticed …

DINGMAN: As the games got underway, I couldn’t help noticing that this group was not as excited about game shows as Jennifer is. They just didn’t seem to have a Tim.

But that’s not J-Money’s fault. As the old saying goes: you can lead a software engineer to a bar in his own office. But you can’t make him drink.

A little while after I visited Game Show Battle Rooms, I talked to Cierra Kindred-Dorsey and Rachel Prickett. They both work at Valentine, the James Beard-nominated restaurant in uptown Phoenix.

Like Jennifer, Cierra and Rachel are both really passionate about what they do. Cierra is a maitre’d, and she takes it very seriously. For her, the job is way more than showing people to their tables and telling them what’s on the menu.

She said she thinks of herself as a steward of space and story.

CIERRA KINDRED-DORSEY: It’s heritage-based labor. As a Black woman working in hospitality and service in America, that means something to me. That means something to my mom and my grandmother, and her mom, and her grandmother, and her grandmother.

Because we built this place. And our labor is what has carried America through some of the darkest times. And showing up for this service, in this capacity, I have to be humble. Because it’s not — I’m not just showing up as myself. I’m a channel for everyone that looks like me that’s done this job, whether they were paid or not. 

DINGMAN: Rachel is the beverage director at Valentine. She told me that she doesn’t want anyone who works for her to deal with the things she has dealt with in the restaurant industry.

RACHEL PRICKETT: I mean, the industry is and has been, for a long time, a boys club. And both being women, I think we’ve both kind of reframed the way we personally want to lead.

Valentine is the first kitchen I worked at where the chefs weren’t screaming at me, or screaming at anybody. And that was a way for me to realize that this was a special place, and something we do differently, is that there is a — one of the first things I learned is that we don’t talk to each other like that. You know, we talk to each other with kindness, with grace.

DINGMAN: Cierra and Rachel have both worked in other restaurants where they felt like their passion wasn’t being appreciated. Cierra used to work in a fine dining restaurant, and she told me that had this thing called a “drop list,” which is a whiteboard that they kept in the kitchen.

Everybody who worked in the kitchen had their name on the whiteboard, and every time someone dropped something, they got a tick mark next to their name. At the end of the shift, everybody would gather in the kitchen to get berated.

At Valentine, they both feel like things are different. Cierra told me a story about the owner of the restaurant, Blaise Faber.

KINDRED-DORSEY: He addressed us as “queen.” And like, wasn’t saying it to be funny or cute. He literally would use that as a title in addressing us whenever he had something to say. And that was brand new to me. And it really showed me that leading with softness and grace was possible, even from a masculine-presenting person. 

DINGMAN: After my conversation with Cierra and Rachel, Rachel mixed me a drink she invented herself.

PRICKETT: This is one of the first cocktails I put on the menu before I became the beverage director. It essentially highlights all of the citrus that Arizona has to offer. It’s seven different types of citrus.

I think she enjoyed making it as much as I enjoyed drinking it. As I sipped it, I thought back to that night I opened my bar at the tech company. And how I spent so many years as an administrative business partner, thinking there was something wrong with me.

But in retrospect, it wasn’t me that needed to change — I just needed to find a job where I was the one talking to people.

Six months after I finished installing that bar, some programmers on my team complained that they didn’t have enough desks in their section of the office. So they had me rip out the bar, and move the couches and tables into storage. The programmers came in and set up desks, where they sat silently in thick headphones, eyes fixed on their monitors, basking in the warm glow of their code.

EDITOR'S NOTE: This story has been updated to correct the spelling of Rachel Prickett's name.