802.11me

Capture the Business

It's January in Chicago, and that means boredom. It's dark at about 4pm, it's pretty cold, the landscape is flat and barren, and plump Chicagoans everywhere waddle about in their sensible coats and scarves, yuck. Fortunately, I have come up with a fun game that we can all play, both in and outside Chicago, that should liven things up a bit. I call this game "Capture the Business".

Here's how it works. Businesses are teams. So Motorola is a team, Burning Door is a team, etc. Now, currently, in the business world, when you want to acquire a business, you get bankers and lawyers, and you pay some amount of money and you acquire that business. Not anymore. In "Capture the Business", every company gets a flag, and if you want to take over a company, you just attack it and capture their flag. Also, you can use real weapons in your attack or defense. If you get the attacked company's flag back to your company's headquarters, then you now own that business. This is much, much better. As Grandpa Costolo used to say, "Dick, if punches aren't thrown, then it's not REALLY a transaction." Whatever. he was kind of weird actually - Smoked a lot of highmaker well into his 80's, used to go on and on about how the Amazon river was God's way of trying to spell the word "Tuba" in 8 different languages, he was kind of weird.

Ok, here are the rules for "capture the business":

a) companies with over 1000 employees are handicapped in the following manner: they can only use weapons in existence before 1850. So, for example, if Motorola or GE attacked Burning Door, they would have to use like, catapults and scabbards and shit.

b) When a company has another company's flag "in the playing field" (ie, anywhere on the globe other than the captured or capturing company's headquarters), any citizen can trip, taunt, or kick the flag bearer with impunity. This means that the unemployed still kind of get to play.

c) When a law firm is captured, the acquiring company can EITHER make the acquired lawyers new employees or sell them into bondage on the black markets.

d) I, Dick Costolo, will run the black markets from here at Burning Door Pharmaceutical World Headquarters. It's my game, it's only fair.

e) Any lawyer selling on the black market for less than 1000 dollars has to learn a trade, and "a trade" shall be defined as "something that hurts your hands" and that lawyer shall not be allowed to practice law again for 3 years and 11 hours.

f) You cannot acquire sole proprietorships. In order to have a flag, a company must have at least two employees. More people should be encouraged to work for themselves and this will foster that sort of trend.

g) You CAN attempt to acquire the government. The Government's flag shall be kept somewhere in a smithsonian complex. I think the smithsonian owns approximately 51,000 properties, so this should make the task monumental.

h) Capture the Business shall end on the first day it's over 70 degrees in the Burning Door Global Markets Inc. courtyard, because really, there's no need for unmitigated plundering when it's spring.

I think that's enough rules for now. I'll come up with more. Let's say this starts tomorrow at around 9am, after we've all had a chance to have coffee.

The cool thing about this will be all the neat job postings that go up on HotJobs and Monster in the next couple weeks. Gone will be the mundane "Asst. Editor" and "IT Administrator" postings, and we will begin to see more fun job openings like "Perimeter Defense Specialist", "Senior Flag Manager, must have MBA and hand to hand combat expertise", and then urgent postings like "Lucent needs people who know ninja shit!", etc.

Oh wait, I just thought of a couple more rules. let's see, how should i number these? i left off at rule "h" above, but this is really kind of a new thought....hmmm, ok, i'm going with "i" to be consistent. you have to be decisive in life:

i) employees can't take over their own company.

j) the ceo of the acquiring company can "pants" the ceo of the acquired company.

k) Any porn on the computers of the IT staff at the acquired company becomes the property of the United Way.

I think that's enough for now.

Posted by Dick at January 14, 2004 11:02 PM | TrackBack