Work hard, play harder

Media buyers are a com petitive, tightly wound lot. So if you happened by Initiative Media on the Friday before Memorial Day, you could have watched them letting off steam in the company’s first Office Games.

Hundreds of employees spent the the day com peting in such events as House of Business Cards, Wastepaper Basketball, Creative Phone Messag ing, Rubberband Archery and even a form of crew that had competitors navigating their chairs backwards down a hallway.

Remarkably enough, the games had the approval of top manage ment. (There was even a rumor, ultimately unsubstantiated, that CEO Lou Schultz would coxswain one of the crew teams.) The idea was to boost morale and team spirit, said Joe Boca, a quality control trainer at the Los Angeles agency who organized the games with Cole Hartman, a manager of business development.

“We just thought it would be a great way to bring people together and have some fun,” said Boca.

As for clients who called that day? “It was kind of funny,” said Boca. “Between events, people would rush over and return calls. I guess that’s the way this business is.”