I worked in a non-engineering role at a place that used cutesy names for almost everything: meeting rooms, engineering teams, internal tools and libraries, even

I worked in a non-engineering role at a place that used cutesy names for almost everything: meeting rooms, engineering teams, internal tools and libraries, events. Nothing was descriptive, and even just fundamental roles and responsibilities were institutional knowledge. (They were "documented", but nobody was responsible for updating the docs when people left/moved/were added.) So when a customer complaint about messaging came across my desk, I'd first have to figure out which team to go to: Ice Cream, Teddy Bear, Jetski, or Pineapple. What parts of the product does Ice Cream work on? Do they work on the messaging protocol? Or was it the app server? Oh, didn't you hear, Jetski took on the app server last month and this week they're spinning off the messaging protocol into a new team, Applejack. Now Ice Cream's only responsible for user authentication. Okay! Cool, so who's in Applejack? The Software Mage for the BrokenLighthouse library, which implements the messaging protocol? No, actually it's the Product Master for BrokenLighthouse's replacement, WorkingSignal. BrokenLighthouse maintenance is still with Ice Cream. Okay! So is the Software Mage for BrokenLighthouse still on Ice Cream, like the directory (sorry, the Cast of Characters) says? No, they transferred to Jetski with the app server, sorry, I mean AppleBucket team. Okay! I'll just join #jetski... wait, it doesn't exist anymore. Oh, right! Now that they have AppleBucket they renamed to Appleski. Okay! I'll just join #appleski. (Damn it, Slack, don't autocomplete it to #applejack or #applebucket-feedback.) "Hey, I've got a support ticket for a messaging protocol issue, can someone help?" > Sure, we're meeting in Batman on that right now! Come join us! Okay! Where's Batman? The office has two floors, Cartoons and Comics, and each is divided into four themed quadrants, and each room is named after someone in one of those quadrants. So Cartoons is split into Adult Swim, Looney Tunes, Simpsons, and Disney, and Comics is split into DC, Marvel, Dark Horse, and Newspaper. Counterintuitively, I loved watching Batman:TAS as a kid before I knew it was a comic book, so I always wind up wandering around WB looking for Batman. "Where's Batman?" Oh, Batman's in DC, upstairs. Okay! I enter Batman and find Appleski talking about BrokenLighthouse. "Hey! Is this where I can ask a customer question about the messaging protocol?" Blank stares. "Sorry. Is this where I can ask about this BrokenLighthouse error message that just says 'AppleBucket is refusing LightBeams from BrokenLighthouse due to a misconfigured PineappleSkin'?" > Oh sure! That's just the message protocol saying there's a syntax error in the config YAML. The v2 protocol will switch to JSON and provide more detailed feedback.