Tales from the Night Shift QA - Mystery of the funky undies

I have received some appreciation for Tales from the Night Shift QA - The Fudge Dragon, which encourages me to write up more of the funny anecdotes of my time working in a bug farm.

I did get a request for the Tale of the Booger Monster, but I’m glad to say that I don’t have any involvement in that story. However, I will include it as a side story.

Prologue

Copy / Pasted from the Fudge Dragon: I’m working the night shift as floor lead for a video game quality assurance lab and we are in the crunch on a AAA game: 12 hour shifts, 6 days a week, for months on end.

In the same building as the QA Lab is a Dev studio owned by the same publisher. The Devs had a loving name for our QA Lab: “la garderie” (kindergarten) since there was a lot of childish behavior being reported to them.

In the QA lab, a rivalry between the day shift and the night shift had set in. Management asked us to stop, but as always, shots kept getting fired, and the rivalry kept flaring up.

Chapter 1: “ménage”

People that have worked with me will know that I like a clean workstation. When I started in the QA lab, there were no assigned workstations: there was one PC with the bugbase per six testers. In this type of environment, personal items had to be stored in one’s locker.?

A few years later it had gotten better with each tester being assigned a workstation, shared between the night shift and the day shift. Then things got messy. People would leave their work stations in an absolutely disgusting state with personal items and garbage all over and around the hardware. I spoke to the day shift leads and that just led to a bunch of finger pointing.

I then installed a “ménage” policy for the night shift: 5 minutes before the end of every night shift I’d call out “Ménage”. That meant that the night shift testers took 5 minutes to get rid of their garbage, rinse and store their coffee cups and any personal items and to tidy up their desks. By doing so, I made sure that the night shift could never be blamed again.

I thought that the day shift would follow by example. Some did, but not all.

Side-Story: The Booger Monster

As stated before, there’s not much story to this, and I’m not part of it. But it was requested, so here it is, but be warned: this is really gross.

One summer, one male tester was Jackson Pollock-ing the bathroom stalls with his...well...I don’t feel the need to complete this sentence. Just to say that it got to a point where all the male testers, both dayshift and night, were rightfully complaining about it. I’m guessing that the person in question heard the reaction to his art, and just kept on working at it.?

HR stepped in with another brilliant to All QA email marked important. If there was a Pulitzer prize for most awkward email sent to staff, this would definitely be a candidate. I don’t remember exactly how it was phrased, but it went along the lines of:

"Dear Employees,

We are aware that one tester is wallpapering the bathroom stalls with his boogers. Management has to remind that employee in particular that the correct way to dispose of one’s boogers is to place it in a piece of toilet paper and to flush it down the toilet.

Do not repeat the offense!"

Everyone had a great laugh reading the email, everyone except for the Booger Monster, who remains unidentified to this day! And as in my previous story (the Fudge Dragon), the Devs in the Studio also got a hold of the mail, and it went viral.

Chapter 2: Trying to resolve the problem

I did try and do the diplomatic thing of talking to the day shift leads. However, the situation never got better: we’d always leave a clean office and come back to a dirty one. My testers were getting mad since they were putting in the effort, and not getting a fair deal. As their lead, I took it upon myself to document the state of the office by taking pictures of the leftover garbage and sending emails to HR. Some of the mails that I sent had up to ten points of conflict.

I also want to say that not all day shifters were slobs and not all night shifters were clean freaks.

But the night shift did have a mandatory clean-up period. A few bad apples on the day shift was enough to fuel the rivalry...I’m talking about actual bad apples left rotting on the desks.

One evening as the night shift was showing up at work, one of my testers, Sam, called me over to his work station which was entirely covered with used and wadded up tissue papers. He outright refused to work on this biohazard of a PC. I sent him to work at another station before I cleaned up the mess with a whole lot of disinfectant. Before cleaning, I took pictures of Mount Tissue wad for the HR.?

A few times, HR transferred my email back to All QAs as an attempt to shame them out of this behavior. It would have a small impact, but then things would return to abnormal.

Chapter 3: the Mysterious Funky Undies

At the start of another night shift, Sam calls me over again to his work station again. In his voice I can hear a mix of anger and laughter. I walk over and look down at the office chair that he was standing over. Staring up at us: the Mysterious Funky Undies. For some unknown reason, someone had left us the present of his filthy underwear. I’m assuming it was his underwear, but this was so insane that he might have left us someone else's underwear and it wouldn’t have made it any weirder.

We suddenly became CSI:QA! We set up a perimeter around the crime scene; we took pictures; we interrogated potential witnesses. I then used a disposable pen to collect the evidence and placed it in a plastic bag, which I sealed. I then sent the evidence to the lab for analysis, and by that I mean that I tied the plastic bag to the HR’s office door (it was about 8 pm, and HR works 8 am to 5 pm). I then sent HR an email that went a little like this:

"Dear HR,

After multiple grievances for workstations being in an unacceptable state, and for the failed attempts at correcting the situation, the problem has only escalated and the night shift testers feel unrespected.??

Enclosed in the plastic bag on your doorknob is the latest item left to us by the dayshift.

*Screenshots attached*

My apologies for the funky undies on your doorknob, but I don’t know what else to do at this point."???

Chapter 4: human resources

Maybe HR was the type of person to read their emails before coming into work. I don’t know. I left that morning at 7 am and she came in around 8. But I do think that there’s the possibility that she didn’t see the mail and came in to see a (white opaque) plastic bag on her door and then she opened it before reading my mail.

Either way, I wanted HR emotionally involved in this. My plan worked. HR was now emotionally involved in this.??

HR sent another All QA mail, which was a fantastic piece of writing once again:

"Dear Employees,

It has come to our attention that the state of the workstations after the day shift are very often in a disgusting state. We have warned you about the situation multiple times. At the end of yesterday’s day shift, a tester left his dirty underwear on an office chair.?

*(my) screenshots attached*

I invite that tester to come claim his underwear in my office.”

Chapter 5: the studio

The email was once again transferred to the Dev studio, and they made it viral in their funny channel, consolidating our title of “la garderie” once more!??

For months after, every time I’d see HR, I’d ask her if the mysterious funky undies were ever claimed. She would give me the evil eye before saying that no one ever did.

To anyone reading this and who still has any of these emails in their archives, please share. I would love to read it again.