Gameify Disney park custodial tasks

Game producer and awesome spouse Alice Taylor had an extremely cool idea for game-ifying the custodial tasks at Walt Disney World. Man, am I a lucky guy:

I was walking over the bridge to Splash Mountain, and I saw a man clad in white overalls, carrying a long-handled dustpan and brush, peering over the edge of the bridge at the water below. "Man, when are they going to clean that up?" he said to himself, and loudly enough so I heard too as I passed.
He was looking at the water below the bridge - a bit murky, a few maps floating in it and a coke bottle or two. Very bad for Disney, very unusual, but more interestingly: this guy was a cleaner, and yet "they" had the job of cleaning the water. Who were They? Another cleaning group, presumably, probably one with waders, and different equipment. Perhaps some extra safety training?
Which got me to gameification. Not points, but simple systems design. Could this guy level up through the Cleaning Guild hierarchy, or complete the Cleaner tree of skills, perhaps? It'd be great if this person - who clearly cared a lot about his work - could simply fix the problem he was looking at, or if not, to know easily and simply what the next level of training and equipment is required. It made me think of Fix My Street, and mobile chores apps like Epic Win, and levelling trees for training & development. That would be a seriously fun problem to solve. What would Disney do?

Happy new year!

(Image: _DSC0078, a Creative Commons Attribution (2.0) image from dannyboyster's photostream)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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spriggan

http://www.chorewars.com/

you’re welcome
semiotix

I’m pretty sure this would work out terribly in practice, even in hyper-controlled environments like the Disney org chart.

First of all, the psychology behind “leveling up” doesn’t lend itself to long-term application.

Second, “leveling up” in RPGs is almost always expressed in terms of “experience” or “skill.” Picking up more trash per day doesn’t really make me a more “skilled” janitor; it just makes me a more conscientious or employer-friendly one.

Third, there aren’t many jobs where “grinding,” i.e. mindlessly repeating the same task regardless of context, is useful to the employer. Sure, there are lots of jobs that are nothing BUT repetition, but if you’re doing one of those there’s no reason for you to be promoted after having completed an arbitrary number of reps, and there’s no reason the company would have anywhere to put you. They could pay you more, as a loyalty-retention sort of thing, but then employers who care about “churn” already do that on a schedule. The problem for most low-level jobs is that your employer didn’t work hard to find you, and won’t mind not working hard to replace you.

But most of all, this would lead to both employers and employees spending all their time trying to game the system.

“You have to promote me to regional manager. I earned 500 Worker Points this quarter.”
“You did that by sweeping the parking lot 500 times! It only needs to be done once a week! Besides, we’ve decided that we want to promote this other guy, who only got three WP but who happens to embody qualities that we’ve retroactively decided to award WPs for, like being an excellent father to my grandchildren.”

And even if it did work, by definition there’d be people still stuck forever at the bottom, the Lvl. 1 half-orc rogues of the work-a-day world, who now wouldn’t even have the luxury of not really thinking about it.
ROSSINDETROIT

Yup. Ladder use FAIL. That said, I’ve changed a lot of light bulbs in public buildings and I can think of three even dumber ways to do it. Think ‘forklift’ and go from there.
I work in the custodial industry now and there are good reasons for a very large organization to have narrow specialties. Efficient work requires specific equipment and training. A really good floor waxing team can create beauty where amateurs would make an ugly mess.
And don’t get me started on floor polishing.
ROSSINDETROIT

Looking at the pic again, she’s not changing bulbs. She’s wearing a battery powered backpack vacuum. Undoubtedly cleaning dead bugs out of the light shade, a perpetual task for all scrupulous custodians. All it takes is one deceased fly to make your lights look dirty.
BillGlover

Coincidentally, I just finished reading MetaGame by Sam Landstrom. It’s a fun first novel about a world where The Game provides a way for a weakly god-like AI to manage a planned economy. Players compete for enough points to earn immortality through regeneration treatments. One of the subgames actually was The Cleaning Game where a remote operator competed for points by managing his sweeper bots resources and cleaning as much ground as he could.
Anonymous

Instead of Disney, I wonder what Will Wright (Sims, SimCity) would do. I wrote a little more on the subject on my blog: http://gharaiblets.com/2011/01/13/4174/

I think the idea has potential, if done right. There are other mobile apps that award points for ‘checking in’ to various locations. I think the framework might be there already.
n3black

Disney, buy your workers a taller ladder! Jeez, just looking at that picture gives me the willies.
- narddogz
  
  That was my first thought also after seeing that photo…
  
  OSHA violation there for sure.
  
  This worker is probably going to hear about it.
  - Anonymous
    
    My first thoughts as well! Not good posting a photo like that… Somebody is going to be in trouble.
- peterbruells
  
  They probably have taller ladders, but he found it more concient to use the shorter ladder for a variety of tasks.
  
  Taking such shortcuts is normal behaviour, I’m afraid.
cinemajay

Yah, the workman’s comp fund is about to take one for the team.
Modusoperandi

Enough about that ladder already! It’s just one sign that Disney isn’t trying anymore. The ladder is a red herring! Why is no one commenting on her terrible costume?
Art

Like the warning label says, “Do not stand on the top step!”

Yeah… but we’ve all done it ;)
nixiebunny

How could anyone comment on the meat of the article when there’s such a blatant safety violation right there in front of our poor eyeballs?
Anonymous

At some level, Disney is big enough to have a high degree of specialization. So it the Pentagon. ISTR that there are people there whose sole job is to replace lightbulbs.
ThatGuyonTV

Judging from the pic’s tags, the photo was taken at Disney’s Hollywood Hotel at Hong Kong Disneyland.
LeSinge

Guys, clearly that is a proton pack and she is a Ghostbuster. Certainly, I can’t be the only person to have noticed this? She even has a trap on her utility belt.
Scrotch

A more promising venue for this sort of idea might be Japanese car factories, as workers are routinely rotated to a variety of different areas in a factory, are actively solicited for insights into ways to increase efficiency and rewarded when they have an idea that is implemented.

You could easily attach a “level-up” mechanic to this. Just establish some different levels for each task (e.g. “Door Welder Level 1 to Level 5″) and attach a time requirement for each worker, say in hours worked, at each level before they are advanced to the next level. Then give an opportunity to skip levels by coming up with a way to actively improve the job, and include “Level 5+X” where X is the number of efficiency insights a worker has had for that job (perhaps overall) to maintain the incentive to continue to contribute even at Level 5.

Sure it’s still a grind, but the rat race is and always has been a grind. At least this one might be more satisfying.
scissorfighter

…but more interestingly: this guy was a cleaner, and yet “they” had the job of cleaning the water.

That’s no surprise at all, as Disney cast members are heavily unionized. Sorry, but there’s not going to be any “leveling-up” or completing the “tree of skills.” The whole point is to do only your job and leave someone else’s job alone.
- Scaramanga9
  
  I can’t comment on the cleaning staff, but there most definitely IS a heirarchy to ride cast members @ DL. And you can indeed level-up to better jobs within that caste.
  - peterbruells
    
    Hmm.. So you can level up from a Duck (No pants) to a Mouse (Pants, but no shirt) to a Dog (pants and shirt)?
Orkney Mutant

Cool idea but I’m afraid it has already been done, and was one of the worst games on its platform.

http://uk.gamespot.com/gamecube/action/universalstudiosparka/review.html?om_act=convert&om_clk=gssummary&tag=summary%3Bread-review
Daemon

“What would Disney do?”

Charge too much, have huge lineups, reduce everyone to a cheap outdated stereotype, and strip out anything too complex for a toddler to understand.
- RedShirt77
  
  So they are printing the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn?
The Life Of Bryan

Heh, I was sure Iâ€™d be the only one to run in wearing a Safety Geek cape. But yeah, thatâ€™s just nuts. Perfect use case for a portable man-lift. Even a taller ladder wouldnâ€™t really be ideal if that task involves half as much reaching as I think it does based on the photo. Just when I thought I couldnâ€™t find any more reasons to loathe Disney.
Anonymous

My first instinct is that the image belongs on Fail Blog not Boing Boing!

That’s a job for a cherry picker, not a ladder. The height to leg span ratio is such that it’s going to be horribly unstable even with someone using it properly!

Has the author never heard of career development? Or is career development now a game?
Glarg

What about you, as a guest, leveling up to guest plus benefits if you crawl down into that dank moat and get the coke bottles out of there? Points!

There’s no romanticizing picking trash out of a water filter, Disney or anywhere else.
DonBoy

I can’t remember where I read it, but somewhere there’s a blog posting asking why so many games seem to be replications of things someone might do at a job. (Maybe I even saw a boingboing link, I just don’t know.) This is the same thing, in the other direction.