A Tour of Pixar

Jellybob writes "A little something for those of you who aren't happy with where you work: just go and work at Pixar." This is apparently part of the Finding Nemo hype machine; here's a BBC story talking about deploying metal detectors and night-vision goggles to stop people from camcording the movie.

Comments

Depressed...

[Shant3030]

I read the first part of the article but stopped after "But first comes the sound: a blast of blues-rock from the four-person band playing in a funky bar-lounge area called "The Animation Pit." "

Now I am thoroughly depressed because the closest thing we have to a blues-rock band is the annoying lady here who plays adult contemporary from her one speaker radio.

Re:Depressed...

[dubiousmike]

The "bathroom effect" yields dividends.

This must be a direct result of all of the free coffee.

It was looking good until

[Timesprout]

That wasn't enough for Pixar's CEO, Steve Jobs. "He thought it was really important that there only be one bathroom in the building, for all 700 people who work here," Greenberg says.

There is no way my bladder could survive the trauma of working there given the amount of coffee I drink

Re:It was looking good until

[Alranor]

It's such a shame you gave up reading at that point, for if you'd just read a couple of lines more you'd have seen

Mercifully for the bladders of Pixar's caffeine-addicted staffers, the central atrium has eight restrooms on two floors -- four men's and four women's

:)

Re:It was looking good until

[cyberchondriac]

and then imagine working on "Finding Nemo", with all the water scenes to "top if off", if you'll pardon the pun. :-) Owwww !
What possible "benefit" could be derived from scaling back on necessary facilities ?

Soccer?

[dfn5]

complete with outdoor amphitheater and half a soccer field

Cool, half a soccer field. So they can ... play with themselves?

Re:Get copy from Hong Kong

[Doomrat]

Hong Kong?! Phooey.

Bathroom effect?? Worst idea ever.

[teamhasnoi]

Here's the "bathroom effect" theory, as Greenberg explains it: "If you have bathrooms that are scattered throughout the building, you use the bathroom nearest to where you're sitting. If there was one bathroom, all kinds of people would come together and talk with one another all the time -- you'd meet different people if you were waiting in line. It would enhance communication, and you'd be talking about things outside of work."

I don't know about you, but when I'm sliding into first, and my pants are about to burst, the last thing on my mind is discussing with coworkers what I was doing at the Chinese massage parlor last night.

Get real. Let's not form lines in front of the bathroom and watch the girl from accounting do the funny walk, as we hold ourselves to keep from peeing.

Whatever happened to watercoolers?

Re:Bathroom effect?? Worst idea ever.

[stratjakt]

What's more annoying than the guy standing at the urinal next to you striking up a conversation? The first thing that invariably pops into your head is "is this guy hitting on me? What the hell is he talking to me for when I've got my dick in my hands?"

I mean I'm there to take a piss, not for an ice cream social.

Re:Bunch of nice people work there

[teamhasnoi]

Wish I was talented enough to work there.

You are talented enough to work there!

It's just that you smell of onions and wet dog. And then there's that lazy eye thing. And the severe tourrets syndrome. And the whole deal about your lack of arms. And the incontinence. And the constant running into server racks with your helmet on.

I didn't want to be the one to tell you...

Re:I'm American, and I'm a Proud one.

[Oliver Wendell Jones]

That reminds me of an incident many years ago... I worked part time at a computer store in Alexandria, VA. One of my co-workers was a U.S. Navy Master Chief who worked at the Navy Research Labs. One of his lab coworkers asked him to buy a copy of a computer game with his employee discount and bring it to him at work. Pretty harmless, right?

The name of the game (IIRC) was The Haley's Project, or something else spacey - you flew from planet to planet within the solar system and at each stop you would receive a trivia clue to guide you to the next planet. Anyways, the manual was made up to look like a NASA guide and all the pages were printed with fake 'TOP SECRET' stamps all over everything.

Last I heard, the guy was still smuggling the manual out one page at a time - stuffed in his underwear - since the security checkpoint wouldn't let him take home anything marked TOP SECRET... :-)

Movie Technology

[syle]

The use of metal detectors and night goggles is still a fairly new practice, having been most recently used in early screenings of X-Men 2 in May and more recently at Down With Love, starring Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor.

Sources went on to say that unlike in X-Men 2, the night vision goggles in Down With Love were used to identify and apprehend those elusive moviegoes who attempted to escape early.