Punishment Game

This month’s playdate is Punishment Game.

A BNP staffer showing the “dare” written on the paper she drew.
Photo by: BNP Design Studio

If you ever had to look after a younger brother or sister, you’ll know better than to leave them on their own, especially when they’re bored out of their wits. Of course, there aren’t any kids around the office, so we thought we could take it easy, but apparently leaving eight bored adults with nothing to do isn’t such a good idea either.

It’s a good thing we’re not too keen on the idea of spending a day in jail or in a courtroom because instead of causing some damage around the office, we ended up playing a punishment game instead after some technical problems gave us some unexpected downtime.

Before we proceeded with the game, though, we decided on the punishments first. We already had some ideas before then, so we just wrote them on several pieces of paper, folded them, and placed them in these egg-shaped toys lying around the office. After that, we asked everyone to pick an egg and show everyone what they got.

The first punishment was proposing marriage to the first guy the one being punished would meet outside the office. By chance, the lot landed to a female illustrator who had to propose to the gardener on the spot. Luckily, her proposal was received favorably, so they lived happily ever after.

The second punishment was walking around pretending to be a cat. This was drawn by one of our writers who is, incidentally, a cat lover, so the task didn’t turn out to be particularly difficult, although we highly doubt she’ll be looking forward to meowing her way around the compound on a regular basis.

The third punishment, on the other hand, was following commands from a military officer. The lot was drawn by one of our writers who was sent marching around the compound under the strict guidance of our commandant… errr… newly-engaged illustrator who was all business during the task. Thankfully, the punishment was limited to marching and hand salutes so we found no need to call the paramedics in.

For the fourth punishment, someone was designated to act out a lovers’ quarrel… with a tree — a task that fell unto one of our male illustrator’s hands. Lucky for him, there weren’t too many people passing around that time of day so he was able to express his regret and undying devotion to the tree in question without any reservations.

The fifth punishment was logging everyone’s time card off for one week. It wasn’t exactly a punishment, but it’s something we wouldn’t mind passing to someone more willing to do it, so we had no problems adding it to our list. It was considered the easiest out of all the punishments so everyone was hoping they’ll get it for themselves, but lady luck favored our lone computer programmer — probably because he was the one brave enough to draw the first lot.

For the sixth punishment, a person was chosen to have random doodles drawn all over their face. Unfortunately for our male illustrator who was chosen for the part, most of the staff does not come close to his drawing talents, so it didn’t take long before his face became an outlet for our drawing frustrations.

If the sixth punishment was slightly fueled by envy, the seventh punishment was largely motivated by need. For this,  one of the staff was sent out to ask for some change from the first person she’d meet. This one took some time because we’re obviously not the only ones who have a strong attachment to our hard-earned cash, but after some begging, she was able to intimidate the security guard into giving his mobile phone in lieu of cash.

All the running around has made us a bit tired at this point, so we decided to wrap things up by assigning someone to one last punishment. The one chosen for this task was one of our female graphic artists who was tasked to “swallow” a small rock and follow it up with a loud shout saying “Ding, ang bato! Darna!”

Unfortunately, the famous cry didn’t have any noticeable effect except for the staff who were left clutching their stomachs while trying their best to suppress their laughter. We did have fun goofing around for a day, though, so we could gladly say that in spite of all the embarrassing photos and videos, it was a day well spent. (^_^)