Turning monotonous tasks into games can be a good way to keep yourself engaged in your work. When I used to work at a pizza place we had to pre-assemble the boxes that the pies went in for deliveries. They would come in packs of 50 and assembling them was a mind-numbing chore when done alone.

To make it a little more interesting though, we would have box folding “races” between the employees – sometimes with stacks of 100 or more. Sure enough, when pitted against one another, the boxes were made faster and employees involved were generally laughing (Or cursing, if losing. But a good-natured cursing.) by the end of it.

Never under estimate the allure of bragging rights and the appeal of turngin anything into a game – even regarding with something as trivial as assembling boxes.

I was reminded of this when I caught this link on kottke.org talking about Target cashiers.

Here’s a view of the cashier screen at Target. The comments explain it pretty well, but the system basically tracks how quickly you can check a customer out and gives you a score. The goal is to check out customers as quickly as possible.

Sounds like less fun than pizza boxes to me, but it’s interesting. Do other corporations implement games at various levels? Does CostCo or Walmart have a “game-like” system in place?

It’s hard to tell, but she’s playing tic-tac-toe. via The Library of Conress.