Reorg, a shell game online with your manager in it

Keep your eye on your boss

Each reorg opens on a row of desks with a person at each. One of them is your manager, ringed in red pen, with a name and a job title. Remember the desk. The face won’t help you in a moment.

Then the partitions go up and hide everyone. HR reads one line over the speaker, and the desks start trading places in pairs. Follow the desk your manager is behind.

When the desks stop, press the one your manager ended at. The desks are the buttons, and the number keys press them from left to right. Every partition drops. If you were right, your manager waves. If not, whoever sits there tells you so, and the pen rings the desk you wanted.

Eight reorgs, each a little worse

A round is eight reorgs and takes about a minute. It starts with three desks and four or five swaps. Then it moves to four desks, and the swaps get faster and more of them.

The last reorgs of a round can cheat a little. Two pairs of desks may trade at the same moment, so all four move at once. A swap may start and then go back, so two desks lean toward each other and return. One other person may look like your manager: same hair, same top, but the glasses are wrong, and they never have a beard. Those last two tricks move nobody, and the rule stays the same: follow the desk.

Take your time

Before you start, you can tick “Take your time”. The desks then move at half speed, and that round sets no best. If your device asks for reduced motion, no desk slides. Each swap is shown as one step with a pause after it, and the desks that traded are outlined and joined by an arc. The pause gets shorter as the reorgs get harder.

100 a desk, plus a run bonus

A right desk scores 100 points. Each right desk also earns 25 more for every right desk before it in the run, so the eighth in a row is worth 275. Eight out of eight makes 1,500. A wrong desk scores nothing and starts the run again. Speed earns nothing, so there is no reason to guess early.

One round a day

Everyone gets the same eight reorgs on the same date, and they change at midnight where you are. Monday has the most easy reorgs and Friday the most hard ones. Finish today’s round on a weekday and it counts as a day clocked in.

A solo round deals eight reorgs this browser hasn’t seen lately. The start panel names any twist before you begin. With consultants on site, every reorg has a swap that starts and goes back. In an open plan round the partitions stay down, and everyone wears the same lanyard and looks the same.

Where the reorgs come from

HR’s lines are written by hand, and none of them is a clue. The desks, the people and the swaps are made in your browser from the date, or afresh for a solo round. For more made-up job titles like the ones at these desks, try the job title generator. In Pizza Party you also watch someone senior, and there you hope they don’t look up.