One of my best memories of 2017 (one of the only memories I have from that year, really, which was otherwise punctuated by deep depression) is of my first Moltres raid.

This is a long story.

My wife and I had been playing pokemon go in the evenings in the area around our apartment, which had two pokestops and a gym spaced out enough that we could walk between them in about the amount of time it took each one to reset. So we'd go walk through the park and do a few loops before dinner.

Nothing major, I was not a serious player. It was just a thing we did together in the evenings.

But one day at work, my boss walked through the break room during the middle of tea time (see: https://retro.social/@ajroach42/112239102375537434 but the gist is that ~25 of my coworkers were standing in the break room drinking tea, and everyone above my boss's level *hated* that we did this for between 15 and 30 minutes at least once but sometimes as often as three times a day.) My boss didn't hate Tea Time as much as the rest of the company. He probably would have joined us, even, if he thought he could get away with it. But he was middle management, he was precarious.

On this day, though, he walked in while we were having tea. Everyone got a little tense, because only about 10 of the thirty or so of us in the room reported directly to him, and all most of the folks there knew about him is that he was pretty vicious as a code reviewer/QA person.

He doesn't engage with anyone, he walks to the cabinet and surveys the teas. (By this point, we had *a lot* of tea varieties, it took him more than a minute to select one.) He really slowly and deliberately washed a travel mug, and made a cup of tea, and just kind of stood there awkwardly. Most of us were new hires, most of us didn't know him very well.

One of the few old hands, Tim, speaks up and asks him what he's been playing recently. He was a long time Nintendo fan, and talking Nintendo was a sure fire way to get him to loosen up.

My boss, Shahdy, actually does a quick double take, and finally says something like "Mostly breath of the wild and uhh... Pokemon Go" and then he kind of smiled.

Tim, I later learned, had been coached to say the things he was saying. This was all planed.

Tim says to the room at large "anyone else play pokemon go?"

These were not people who knew each other well. I'd been with the company for almost a year, Tim for 5. A few of the other folks standing there had been there for between 12 and 18 months. Everyone else was under 6 months.

Tea time was our only "socialization" really, and we mostly talked about work.

A few people say that they do. No one really seems excited.

Time says, again to the room at large "there's a pokestop you can hit from our side of the office. Anyone play during work hours?"

No one says a word. Everyone assumes they're being set up (they were, but not like that.)

Finally Thomas breaks the silence.

(Aside: Thomas and I would go on to work together for the next 6 years)

"I keep my Pokemon plus in my pocket all day. I'll play on lunch. There's a gym that's just up the sidewalk."

Shahdy grins. "A gym? Really? Where?"

Thomas pulls out his phone and zooms out the map to show everyone where the gym is.

Tim, playing his part "Wait, why is that egg silver? I thought all the eggs were pink and yellow?"