Rock Paper Scissors Shoot!
Tuesday, January 31st, 2012 at 10:00am -- Holly Wright
There comes a time during the day, usually shortly after lunch, when I start to feel the afternoon Zzzzz’s creeping up on me. There’s something telling my body that it’s time for a Siesta. Perhaps it’s the digestion process. Perhaps this is when the caffeine injection from the morning wears off. Regardless of the reason, I work in the United States, where mid-workday naps are not looked upon favorably. So instead of giving in to the temptation, I stand up, walk around for a minute, find a brief distraction to wake me up, and then head back to my desk to finish the workday.
In an office full of software developers, you can imagine that the distractions available are quite plentiful, but one of my favorite distractions is a friendly game of rock paper scissors with one or two of my fellow team members. Over the last several weeks, this has evolved into an almost daily ritual, complete with a scoreboard at the desk of Eric, our Spectate Product Manager.
You’ll notice that Eric’s track record boasts more tally marks than anyone else. There may be a simple explanation for this: Eric is better at Rock Paper Scissors than anyone else. OR maybe... just maybe... there’s another, less obvious explanation. Maybe Eric has just played way more than anyone else. After all, the scoreboard is at his desk. And if you look closely, you can see that only wins are accounted for. There’s absolutely no penalty for losing a game.
This got me thinking. Among other things, Eric is a salesman. In sales, nothing is more important than your number of wins. It doesn’t really matter if your win/loss ratio is poor, so long as you’re winning a good total number of deals. Obviously, there are rewards for winning more often than losing: you can make more money or work fewer hours. But as long as you’re winning a good raw quantity of deals, the success rate is less important. Maybe that’s why Eric created the scoreboard this way, from a sales team-biased perspective.
So, back to Rock Paper Scissors. I've come up with a few strategies to help me beat some of my co-workers. At first, I used to throw people off by calling it Paper Rock Scissor or Scissor Paper Rock. This had people thinking that I had no clue what I was doing and that any wins were just lucky coincidences. However, there were only so many people I could pull that on before I had to “learn” the real name of the game. Next, I started trying to psych people out, talking trash before we played, pointing to my tally section (which has the second highest number of tallies--after Eric’s, of course). This worked too, until people heard me complain about Eric’s record and the fact that losses are not recorded. Turns out this worked against me in the exact same way.
Our Sales Engineer, Charlie, uses a technique where he decides what he’ll play in advance before he sees what his opponent will play. That way, he is unaffected by the mind games of his opponents. (Turns out he pretty much plays Rock, Paper, Scissors, in that order--just about every time.) I’m not convinced of the efficacy of this strategy, though it does seem to be working for Charlie. Alas, other than trying to figure out where my opponents will go after a series of shoots (the "out-wit, out-play, out-last Survivor Strategy"), I am out of ideas.
Does anyone out there have any Paper Rock Scissors tips for me? What strategies do you use? What do y’all think of a Paper Rock Scissors station at the User Conference this year? Please leave your tips and suggestions in the comments section below.
One last thing--if you don't have anyone to play with in your office, there's a very fun, online alternative: Play Rock Paper Scissors with a Robot from the New York Times.
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