PlayPenOffice is an office absolutely unlike the office I work in, where a bunch of totally imaginary people, with a completely fictitious CEO, try to cope with ludicrously unbelievable office work : or where they just turn up and hang out daily in order to get paid not very much at all.
I originally started up the PlayPenOffice site with a firm decision to only write up stories that were, unfortunately, TRUE - stories that had happened either to me, to my cousin Elli, or to people I knew were telling me the truth. I admit I fictionalised it all up (and maybe exaggerated some things a little) but the basic stuff was all true. The caricatures I created were a mixture of various real-life American and British workplace associates, all names and locations were deliberately changed and all office layouts altered : the idea was to make sure that if anyone I'd ever worked with found this site, or (more likely) if someone found it and read it to them, they wouldn't be able to recognise themselves.
The original caricatures I set out to use to tell those stories with have grown and developed over the year I've been writing about them, and the fictional office has taken on an independant life of it's own. I realised I was starting off a story only to find the characters picking it up and taking it away from me, and sometimes working it towards a different conclusion to the one I was aiming for. There were times I had to fight real hard to drag it back in to my control. I was still writing real life happenings into the week as well, but the characters started hijacking those things too.
By the time I took a vacacation from them (01/07/02-0/07/15) I'd begun to get a little annoyed with them - I'd created the characters, and I thounght I should be able to control them. I found I couldn't, so now I've given up trying to.
I am no longer trying to keep all fiction out, but just starting off the week with a true incident and seeing where the characters in the PlayPenOffice take it - it's getting interesting now.
I said originally if you DID recognise yourself anywheres here - it wasn't you. Now I can say it's DEFINITELY not you.
If you work with any of these people however, send me the proof they really do exist and I'll start a 'sympathy' page.
