Microsoft Halloween Office Contest

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Many years ago before Microsoft got too big (circa mid 90’s) there was an unofficial “Decorate your office for Halloween contest.” There was no prize. It was just for bragging rights about how spooky you could make your office on Halloween.

Throughout the day, word would get around as to what offices in what buildings to check out.

Most people would bring in black lights or posters or have scary music playing. There were always the requisite cobwebs everywhere. Also included were body parts and pumpkins.

In 1992, I was determined to win. During that time I was doing a lot of the yard work around my house. Raking leaves cutting back branches and trimming back blackberry brambles.

After staying up late the night before Halloween (and drinking a few beers), I had this brilliant idea. I would turn my office into a cemetery and use the leaves and blackberry brambles as decoration to make it look like it was outside. I had a projector that would display of a full Moon on wall and audio editing software to create audio ambiance. Crickets chirping, wolves howling, an owl hooting ended noise of a babbling brook. I could make headstones out of Styrofoam and mix up a batch of fake blood and bring in the body parts.

So here it is, 4:00 AM Halloween morning and packing my Mustang with all the gear I’m going the use to win this nonexistent prize. The gear I packed also included four large lawn and leaf bags full of leaves and blackberry vines complete with thorns.

Hours before anybody showed up for work I was already there working hard. I started by hanging a 9 foot by 12 foot sheet of black plastic in the back of the office to make it darker. Next was to dump out the leaves and spread them on the carpet. I brought in so many leaves; they were 3 inches thick on the floor. I then untangled the blackberry vines and spread them about the office. I set up the rest of my props, turned on the Moon projector, and turned on the soundtrack. Finito!

Needless to say, word got around campus that people should check out the office in building 16. There must have been about 50 people that stopped by that afternoon to take a peek. The company newspaper even stopped by and snapped a few pictures.

Nobody said it, nobody had to. I had the best decorated office on Halloween in 1992 at Microsoft.

At the end of the work day, I was too tired to clean it up. I figured there were more people that would want to see it before I tore everything down anyway.

The very next morning when I came into my office, my door was closed and there was a note on it.

The note was from the cleaning staff. The note stated that there was no way they were going to clean my office, or if they did my business unit was going to get a huge cleaning bill.

That evening I left a note on the door for the cleaning staff that explained I had no expectation that they would clean my office.

Sidebar: I didn’t clean my office for another week and I was a mini manager at the time so there was a lot of traffic in and out of my office. The lease the cleaning staff didn’t have a problem vacuuming the leaves of the hallway every night.

Here is a picture of what my office looked like in standing in the doorway. It was a mess; a very proud mess, indeed.