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Two Man Filing Cabinet Bobsleighing

winter Olympic events, using office equipment
  (+18, -3)(+18, -3)
(+18, -3)
  [vote for,
against]

Two Man Filing Cabinet Bobsleighing is just one of a number of new events to be embraced at the next winter Olympic games.

The rules are simple. You take one standard 4 drawer filing cabinet as a starting point. You can add to it, but only using other basic items available in any office: ie umbrella stands could become the runners; an angle-poise lamp could be used as a braking mechanism; dismantled swivel chairs would provide all the necessary padding.

It's a simple event, with few rules. To make it slightly easier, there would be no penalty for any competitors who's filing cabinet tumbled over, or broke apart and went down the track sideways or in some other ungainly manner.

Note - event also suitable for women competitors, but in addition they have to answer a phone call, take a memo, or paint their nails before crossing the finishing line :-)

xenzag, Feb 26 2010

Idiotarod http://www.cartsofb...lyn.com/basics.html
shopping carts instead of sleds, humans instead of dogs [ryokan, Mar 03 2010]


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Annotation:







       This is brilliant. [+]
MaxwellBuchanan, Feb 26 2010
  

       Quality [+]
8th of 7, Feb 26 2010
  

       Tenative [+], but your comment about women competing seems superfluous. If women have to take a memo on the way down, so should men.
gisho, Feb 26 2010
  

       Do the teams arrive with pre-built contraptions, or does the race include entering a standard office, using its contents to build said contraption, as well as riding it? [+] Gratuitous sexism [-]
pocmloc, Feb 26 2010
  

       The men have to crumple up the memo and throw it into a garbage can along the way.
lurch, Feb 26 2010
  

       oh yeah+ I work in a medical office and I also have crutches and other strange devices to attach to my filing cabinet!! (I don't paint my nails, but I could clip them whilst taking a memo, answering the phone and making an appt.)
xandram, Feb 26 2010
  

       I'm sure the sexism is only to address that which already exists in the olympics, as well as in offices for that matter.
rcarty, Feb 26 2010
  

       Scrapheap Challenge meets Rollerball meets Death Race 2000 meets The Office ...
8th of 7, Feb 26 2010
  

       A *standard* filing cabinet, you say? Such as ordinary office furniture suppliers suply to ordinary offices? Think of the sponsorship opportunities!
mouseposture, Feb 27 2010
  

       heheh, thinking of updated office supply catalogues featuring high-end filing cabinets that look a bit... unusual.   

       [+] of course.
FlyingToaster, Feb 27 2010
  

       I really like the title and concept of people holding on to a filing cabinet for their dear life - seems like like something you'd find on a European Terry Pratchett cover, doesn't it? - but was disappointed by the text. Adding more items just seems to water it down, and the sexism :-) at the end doesn't work for me, even as a meta-joke. Sorry.
jutta, Feb 27 2010
  

       [jutta] in [x]'s defense, the outdated concepts you object to match the usage of physical filing cabinets: also considered outdated.   

       (though I personally took "Two Man" to be the inclusive form and wandered off attention-wise before the last paragraph since I don't remember reading it the first time.)   

       sp. "whose"; very last comma is redundant.
FlyingToaster, Feb 27 2010
  

       Well, that depends on whether you're using Chicago Manual of Style rules or Associated Press rules.
jutta, Feb 27 2010
  

       Under the circumstances go with the Chicago Manual, ahem, Guide, ahem, Rules. Yeah, Chicago Rules.   

       When I first read the idea, I thought it was a nice way to bring up issues of inequality in industry and athletics. That would have added another nice layer to the writing if it wasn't just tacked on at the end. I think you realized this, but the result was inelegant.   

       As social commentary combining workplace and athletics based around the idea of filing cabinet bobsleds it probably would have been better to take aim at unfairness without the stereotyping such as the men's races start and end at higher positions than the women's races, and the women's races arn't over until they're at the bottom and have done all the filing.
rcarty, Feb 27 2010
  

       Believe it or not, I thought long and hard (exaggeration) about the 'extras' for the female competitors, but in balance decided to include it. "Male" and "female" events that require the female competitors to "not quite do as much" seem a most debatable issue to me re equality, as is the sterotypical office "girl" - (put it down to too many episodes of Madmen of late)   

       Who's seems like the possessive case until you consider that "who's" is also the abbreviated version of "who is". "Whose" always seems to refer to a personal interrogative eg Whose face is that? Contrast this with: "those who's faces are unknown" That's how I call it anyway.
xenzag, Feb 27 2010
  

       How about a tea-trolley steeplechase for the next Olympics?   

       Competitors would have to push around a fully laden tea- trolley, negotiate the water troughs (the hurdles would be removed and replaced with stepped humps), then deliver cups of tea and penguin or club biscuits (probably unknown in the colonies) to the judges.
xenzag, Feb 27 2010
  

       // making a pot of tea and pouring it out into a couple of cups, //   

       Unless the female concerned is a Civil Service employee, in which case she would be required to dispense a liquid which is almost (but not quite) entirely unlike tea ...
8th of 7, Feb 27 2010
  

       //How about a tea-trolley steeplechase //

You would have thought that that would have been baked already, wouldn't you? Apparently it hasn't.
DrBob, Mar 01 2010
  

       Scooter Jousting - using Lambrettas or Vespas - and Mobility Scooter Jousting, does in fact exist, however.
8th of 7, Mar 01 2010
  

       Shades of the Idiotarod... I like it.
ryokan, Mar 03 2010
  

       Something like a conference table or cubicle walls might be suited better for this. Every time I try to visualize this, the file cabinet corners dig into the ice, there's a high speed tussle of flesh and sheet metal, and it ends with cloud of paper folders in the air.
AutoMcDonough, Mar 03 2010
  

       //cabinet corners// there's always 0.5" - 2" clearance on the inside so either rounded manufacturing or a good bash with a sledgehammer (sledge...hammer... get it?) should take care of that.
FlyingToaster, Mar 03 2010
  

       // sledgehammer //

<Cymbal sting>
.
.
<Sound of wind>
.
.
<Tumbleweed blows past>
.
.
<Slow handclaps>
8th of 7, Mar 03 2010
  

       I had a go in a bobsleigh the other day. It was terrifying! [+]
DocBrown, Mar 05 2010
  

       Was it the upside-down one that the British team seem to have bought on Ebay?
DrBob, Mar 05 2010
  

       No, it was a bona fide four-man bob with nary a trace of inversion or filing. The most amazing thing about the ride was the rate at which the thing went from upright to almost 90 degrees - it happened almost instantaneously and was accompanied by what felt like a giant hand mashing down on the head.
DocBrown, Mar 05 2010
  


 

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