the FULL INSIDE INFORMATION on the Team - 
WARNING - you have been warned !

the Team:

AJ	Amy	Andy	the Cleaner
To be filled - was Donna	Fiona	Guru Bob	James
LeeAnn	Me!	Mike	the Killer Plant

You've met all these people before - haven't you?

PlayPenOffice's CEO - AJ.
He's called AJ - we think it stands for something, but he prefers initials and acronyms anyways, so you can't really tell. He's smart enough when it comes to his own survival - he fought his way to the top, pulled up the ladder behind him and is always ready to stamp on fingers.
He's found the secret of how to keep his record flawless - keep everything verbal and deny as necessary. He also says he's 'into' the latest technology (his Big Boss is anyways.)
Although …
 He still thinks 'powering up' a PC is hiring new staff to run it.
 He's already said he's noticed that nobody utilizes their mouse 100 percent of the time. I am to investigate the practicalities of forming a share scheme or "mouse pool" to cut our mouse maintenance costs. So that's another on the list of things to do - just above "list the printer cables by length, in case we want to move them" and right underneath "get another job."

He's got a front corner office, overlooking the parking lot and by the stairs - convenient for quick getaways.

Head Office IT CEO - Guru Bob - my other boss.
He's at the same level on the food chain as AJ, just in a different queue for the buffet.
He doesn't need to come to our site as often as he thought he might have to, as I'm there to fix the minor stuff, do the backups and troubleshoot the PCs, printers and users.
I get the occasional visit, and at least one soothing phone call a week - normally the day after I send him the "more technical" version of my weekly report. He knows I give AJ the "simpler" edited version (that means the one without the personal comments and swear words.)
He has said I'll be moved into full-time IT when there's a vacancy, but I know it won't happen - I'm too useful here.

His Big Boss and AJ's Big Boss aren't exactly fighting just yet, but they both know it'll only be a matter of time before a VBB (Very Big Boss) retires and the scramble up the ladder starts up again. So they're just marking time and gathering allies.

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Head of Production - Andy. (also known as 'yes AJ')
Originally a paper fanatic, he's trying to adapt to a CEO who'll hide rather than reply to a memo.
He's a natural pessimist who's been proved right so many times. He only stayed after the buy-out as he thought he'd be the new CEO, even though he'd be even worse than AJ.
He'd been trying to get his own private office for years and when AJ first came he sucked up to redesign the office space. AJ was trying to be kind to the loser, so he allowed him to.
His office is therefore in the other front corner, by the break room.
He's got a window, but never opens it even though the office is right over the heat sealer so it gets real warm in there. At least he's not in with us peons any more.

Sales - Mike.
He'll only visit customers in the mornings and makes sure he spends afternoons in the office, so he can always finish on time. He keeps an information database on our regular customers, with their first names, children's hobbies, favorite teams, etc. It's up to date - he spends hours on it and checks it before he goes out to see someone. Unfortunately he gets confused easy: so although it's accurate, it's never accurate about the person he's actually talking to.
He collects all sorts of useless gadgets, but most electronic things die when he touches them. Once a hire car shorted out all its electrics when he walked up to it.

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Purchasing - Fiona.
She acts like the company's money's her own, spends hours shopping around to save three cents, and if you want an office pad refill you have to convince her you didn't waste the first one. She's into personal mantras, auras, bicycling to work and whole-food veganism, and disapproves of coffee, meat-eaters, and deodorant.

Accounts - James.
He left the company in May '00 as he decided he couldn't work with the new invoicing and expenses systems AJ wanted him to use. AJ decided he'd do the accounts himself as it surely didn't take that long to do - and three weeks later he gave up and went to an agency to hire someone.
The agency sent us James (for more money) and the old system's back too.
His office is on the factory side, opposite AJ's, and is nearly as big - it's got a window too.

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Customer Service - not yet filled.
Donna used to do this job - it's to take customer orders and release finished goods.
Donna was a gossip broker - she'd trade what you'd heard for what someone else had. She also swapped news about us for information from her daughter, Carly.
Carly works the Head Office switchboard, and we find out more through her than we ever get out of AJ.

Production Planning - LeeAnn.
She's a 20 year-old Goth Biker, six foot two inches and muscles mixed with puppyfat, always wears black, and comes in 7 minutes late whenever she can't decide what to wear straight off.
She's either getting involved with a new boyfriend or agonizing over a breakup, and each one of the guys she gets involved with has had some major reason why you wouldn't want to be in the same room with him for too long.

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Reception - Amy.
The official Office neurotic - all the rest of us are just amateur. If anything unusual happens, it'll happen to Amy.
She does all the filing and the PA work for AJ, Andy and Mike.
She's also got a daily routine and panics if you ask her to do anything that might upset it. Her desk is laid out just so, with all the lucky charms in easy reach, and she spasms if you stand too close to it.

Donna and LeeAnn (with Amy in tow) take over the break room during breaks, harrass any young male shopfloor worker stupid enough to come up into the office, openly discuss their private lives and medical histories with a frankness you wouldn't believe unless you heard it, and live from crisis to crisis. If there isn't one happening in the office, one of them'll have a personal one to keep the average up.

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the result of AJ's "environmental policy" - the Killer Plant
This large vine-type looking plant was ordered by AJ to replace a perfectly harmless plastic plant and, after lurking in the break room for a while, now occupies a corner of AJ's office. It's firmly established, and has made the occasional grab at Amy.

Shipping & SysAdmin - Me!
I've been with the company now for x weeks and there are times when it feels like x+1 weeks too many.
I've my own office - it used to be the file cupboard but Andy had all the cabinets moved downstairs during the redesign, and nobody else wanted it so I got it. It's on the factory side opposite the rest room and next the photocopier and printers - there's no window, no ventilation, and one overhead naked light. I can either close the door and suffocate or leave it open and go deaf.
Nobody can read over my shoulder as they can't get further than the doorway if I'm in there - there's room for me, a table, a chair, and that's it.

the Cleaner.
We have one who comes in at night, apparently - but nobody's ever seen one. At least, we think it's a cleaner.
Someone comes in at night, moves paper around, goes through desk drawers and leaves notes on things, like "not dusted" and "not standard waste bin."
It might not be a cleaner. We might get raided every night by hyper-critical burglars.

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revised: 2001-12-30   URL: http://www.playpenoffice.com/people.html