The Fly Game

In a company whose operation is to take rotten food and turn it into acids and methane (vomit and poo), there tend to be pest issues. We recently purchased an industrial-size fly zapper and it works like a dream...when the flies find it. Every once in a while we'll stop working, I'll tape cardboard over the windows and doors so the room is dark and the flies are attracted to the zapper. Then the boys sit in front of it and shout every time one "gets it." One poor bastard of a fly got stuck between the electrodes and stayed there, continually zapping for about a minute and 45 seconds. They shouted the entire time. It was like watching 5 year olds. But that is beside the point. And, had they actually been 5 year olds, they probably would have passed out at the excitement. Or vomited.

Because we have to filter the rotten poo before we can do any testing on it, we have a number of unused filter screens just laying around in various sizes. One of the guys on the "business team" got annoyed about the flies one afternoon and took one of the stiffer screens to make a flyswatter. The game was on to see who could keep the best percentage in terms of (number of dead flies)/(number of swings). Your most recent score (most recent possession of the death implement) is the one that counts. So if you have a good percentage, you can only hold it until the flies drive you nuts again. And they will.

The makeshift flyswatter has proven far too shoddy, and the game has evolved to also see who can get the most creative in their fly destruction tools.

Today, I won. I went to pee, and when I stood up off the toilet, a fly flew into the bowl. I flushed. 0 swings, 1 fly. My percentage is infinite right now.