Title: How do we hire people without them being freaked out by our cardboard coworker?
Source: Ask A Manager
I am not the original poster
Original Post: Mar 18, 2026
Recently my manager asked me to help revise a job posting and the hiring process because the last two people we hired left only a few weeks after starting. One said she didn’t think our workplace had a professional environment, and the other said she realized her values didn’t align with the company. Since I’m the most recent successful hire, my manager wants me to help her understand what was different about how I was selected.
You’re probably assuming my workplace must be toxic or terrible, but honestly it’s the most fun place I’ve ever worked, and that might actually be the problem. Nothing about it fits the usual idea of a bad workplace, but it is definitely … peculiar.
People often eat lunch together. Not everyone every day, but a few times a week most of us end up eating with coworkers. (Not everyone participates. The person who splits tasks with me says she already sees us enough at the office and never joins us, and no one minds.) Lunch is where most of the unusual things happen.
One employee created a betting sheet for which celebrity will be the next to die or get involved in a scandal. You can add one name per month, and if you guess correctly you win a day off. It sounds worse written down than it actually feels, but the people who participate genuinely enjoy it.
Lunch conversations can also drift into very unprofessional territory. The week one employee resigned, the lunch debate was whether extraterrestrials are capable of orgasms. That discussion lasted more than one lunch break because people kept proposing different possible alien anatomies.
But the least professional thing we do might be the cardboard figure sitting at a desk named Robert. Robert has been part of the company culture long before I joined. The story behind him is about a former employee who would arrive, greet everyone, and then disappear until it was time to go home. No one ever knew where Robert was, and whenever someone needed him they couldn’t find him, but the work always appeared completed.
One day the company needed a team photo, and someone grabbed a cardboard box, drew a face on it, added a badge, and included “Robert” in the picture. After the real Robert retired, the box eventually evolved into a full cardboard cutout that now sits at its own desk.
At the end of each month we usually have less work, and there’s a game where someone hides Robert somewhere in the company and everyone searches for him. At the end, everyone gets candy. Not everyone actively participates, one person keeps a map coordinating where Robert hasn’t been searched for yet, some people give suggestions, and others don’t care about the game, but no one objects to it except HR did ban hiding Robert in the interview room and the public-facing areas.
Both employees who resigned witnessed a “Find Robert” search. They didn’t mention it specifically, but I imagine it might have contributed to their impression that the environment wasn’t professional.
My manager wants help finding people who would think these things are funny rather than strange, and she asked how I felt when I started. I happened to begin (luckily or unluckily) when people were decorating Robert with a heart-pattern tie and a box of bonbons while discussing what kind of box Robert would like as a girlfriend. I thought it was weird in a funny way, and it didn’t bother me enough to reconsider the job.
Outside of lunch and the occasional Robert hunt, people are actually very professional during working hours, aside from occasionally greeting the cardboard coworker or decorating him for holidays. We’re a very productive and inclusive team, but I understand how it might seem strange to someone seeing it for the first time.
I honestly don’t know how to help my manager find competent people who would be comfortable with this environment. The person who interviewed me said the team was laid-back, but that definitely didn’t prepare me for what the office is actually like.
Someone suggested hiding Robert for a while, but wouldn’t it be better for new hires to know what they’re getting into? How could we find people who would feel comfortable discussing whether the aliens from Arrival understand sex and also think it’s perfectly normal to greet a cardboard coworker?
I realize your answer might be that our company isn’t the wonderful place I think it is and that we should behave more professionally. But considering that our CEO once hid Robert in his own office during one of the searches, I don’t think the culture will change. (Still, feel free to say so if that’s your view, sometimes an outside perspective is very different.) I’m mainly looking for ideas on how to select people who would actually find this kind of thing fun rather than uncomfortable.
Note: You can read Alison’s response at the link above.
Update: April 6, 2026
Thank you for responding to my letter. After reading the response and comments, I realized that the alien orgasm example drew more attention than I expected, even though I had meant it as one particularly bad example rather than the main issue itself. I wanted to add a little more context and clarify a few points.
The alien orgasm example was an outlier, and one of the worst examples I could remember, which is why I used it. The “alien anatomy” discussion was also less about sex itself than about whether extraterrestrials would experience pleasure or physical sensation the same way humans do, especially if they did not even have bodies like ours. I understand that it was still inappropriate, but some commenters seemed to come away with the impression that sex is a regular topic in the office, and that is not really the case.
A more typical version of these conversations would be discussions about books, movies, and TV shows. We have had conversations like which horror movie character was so stupid that you actively rooted for their death. We have also had conversations like which politician you would “make disappear” if you could get away with it, but when someone pointed out that it was inappropriate, the conversation moved on without any fuss. In general, the conversations tend to get strange in a morbid way rather than in a sexualized one. That is still a problem, of course, just not quite the same one some people focused on.
The office betting pool is less about hostility toward specific celebrities and more about the kind of morbid joking people make about public figures who seem as though they have been old forever. The attitude is usually more “I cannot believe this person is still alive” than “I want this person to die.” Similarly, the “scandals” people talk about are usually things like cheating, wearing something provocative, or being rude to a fan, rather than actual criminal behavior. I do not participate in the betting pool because I would feel too guilty winning a paid day off by correctly guessing someone’s death, but people do sometimes mention their picks during lunch.
I mentioned lunch because that is usually when the conversations can get strange. Most of our work requires concentration, so there is not much chatting during the day, and many people wear headphones most of the time. Team lunches also really are optional. We are a small team inside a large company, so the whole team does not eat together every day, but there are usually six to eight people having lunch together, even if it is not always the same group.
I described cardboard Robert as the strangest part because all the other things are occasional, and lunch itself is optional. Some people never have lunch with the team, and that is completely fine. But Robert is there every day, sitting at a desk and being greeted. It took me about two months to find out there was a death pool, and some time before I heard one of the more inappropriate lunch conversations, but I was introduced to Robert on my first day. My manager even told the team to act normal during my first week so they would not scare me off. The monthly “hunt” for Robert is optional and avoidable, but comments about him happen every day, and new employees are introduced to him as though he is simply part of the team.
In your response, it seemed as though my letter came across as asking, “How can we change our culture so people don’t feel this is a sexualized environment?” I can understand why, given the example I used, but the help I was really hoping for was a little different. What I was trying to ask was something more like, “How can I help my manager hire someone who is likely to fit in here, while also giving candidates a fair sense of what the office is like, so neither side feels misled?” Someone suggested inviting candidates to join a typical team lunch, and that was much closer to the kind of suggestion I had been hoping for.
I also appreciated your point that inappropriate conversations are inappropriate no matter when they happen. I do know that, and I think at least part of the team knows it too, given the ongoing joke that there is probably a reason our room is physically as far from HR as possible. But I am not a manager, and honestly I do not want to be one. My manager decided that because I was the most recent hire, I was the right person to help her think through this, even though I do not really have the authority or the tools to change how the team operates. I will pass these points along to her, but I do not think much would change without rebuilding the team almost from scratch.
To be clear, I do understand why these things are a problem. I am not trying to defend them or suggest that people are wrong for not wanting to work here. I just wanted to provide more context so I could get advice that was more specific to the situation I was actually asking about. Some of the comments were genuinely helpful, and I was hoping that with a better explanation I might get more of that. But if the answer is still simply that the culture needs to change, I do understand that, and I appreciate your response anyway.
Sincerely,
The Person with the Cardboard Coworker
This is a repost community, I am not the OOP