The Weekly (San Jose Mercury News)

Mystery spices up company events

By Sally Richards

Picture yourself at a company banquet. A woman staggers into the dining room, clutching a bloody bandage to her arm, and screams "I've been shot!" A rumor goes around the table that it could have been your chief executive officer who committed the crime.

Have you entered the corporate "Twilight Zone"?

No, the odds are you're just part of a murder mystery that your company has decided to throw in with the wining and dining. Some companies are staging such mystery parties to entertain employees -- while at the same time improving teamwork.

The shooting occurred at a private party at the old Bourbon Street Restaurant in Mountain View, hosted by Software Publishing Corp. to reward research-and-development team members for their efforts on a project that was coming to a close.

"Everybody's been working real hard on this project," said Jill Morgenthaler, special events and exhibit manager at Software Publishing, which is based in Mountain View. "We wanted to have a real team-building party, but have fun at the same time."

The actors who staged the evening of crime were part of a team from Murder on the Menu, an Oakland company which researches and writes high-tech murder mysteries for companies such as Apple Computer Inc. of Cupertino, VLSI Technology Inc. of San Jose, 3Com Corp. of Mountain View and Hewlett-Packard Co. of Palo Alto. Although the company concentrates on corporate murder, it also draws mysteries around the Victorian era, gangster murders of the 1920s and the Barbary Coast life of San Francisco.

Janet Rudolph, murder mystery writer and owner of Murder on the Menu, said she believes a mystery is a good way for company employees to blow off a little steam and forget about the job.

"It's a problem-solving, team-building event," Rudolph said. "People have a chance to mingle in a non-work atmosphere. It can be a lot of fun."

Many of the Software Publishing employees on this particular night had no idea what was going on when an argument broke out between a man, who claimed to be the new chief executive officer of their company, and a woman, who claimed to be the new chief financial officer. After the first attempted killing, though, people began to catch on, take notes, ask questions, discuss clues and work together to solve the crimes.

Diners at the banquet, grouped in tables of seven, were encouraged to walk up to microphones and question actors and fellow employees about the crimes.

Many took the opportunity to accuse fellow workers of murder, extortion and company hanky-panky.

Not all employees were convinced, initially, that they would enjoy the evening.

"At first I thought it was going to be an intrusion on my evening," said Jeff Blaze, a test engineer. "I very much enjoyed it. The actors wandered around the whole room and were amongst us the whole time. They didn't stumble around when something unexpected came up, they were very good improvisers. It served its purpose -- there was no shop talk here tonight."

"I had no idea we were going to be doing this," said Anne Marie Jensen, a technical writer. "I came in here with my corporate hat on. I figured it would be a good opportunity to interact on an informal level with people I need to interact with ... It's fun just to sit back and watch the plot unfold. Considering the kind of pressure we've been under, it's a great time for the entire group."

The real chief executive officer, Fred Gibbons, who also was a suspect, mingled with the employees.

"It was a lot of fun," Gibbons said. "There's been a lot of tension in getting this project finished. You have to find a creative way to have fun and to poke fun at each other."

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