What’s the best way to practice our core values of hiring smart people, sharing information, and having fun? If you thought “join a bar trivia league,” you would be absolutely correct!
What started as a fun evening activity for a small group of our summer new hires quickly turned into a weekly tradition amongst trivia-minded members of our entire DMC Chicago team. The whaddayaknow free pub trivia group hosts game nights at bars all around Chicago and bi-annual tournaments for the top teams from each bar.
DMC’s team can be found competing under the moniker “Frank’s Monkeys,” and we easily identified as the only team likely to cheer whenever MATH is announced as a category. Team sizes are limited to eight players, so, on especially popular trivia nights, we have had to split into multiple teams with our second team taking the name “Frank’s Donkeys.” This once hilariously resulted in an announcer asking if Frank happened to have a farm.
To help coordinate our team(s) and keep up the hype from week to week, we started #hire-smart-trivia-people, an internal Slack channel, with reminders to RSVP. Keeping consistent with all DMC-related events, +1’s and families are always welcome! Emoji polls are the preferred method of attendance tracking — the more creative the better.
Every Wednesday, Frank’s Monkeys would meet at Innjoy in Wicker Park to enjoy a few rounds of drinks, snacks, and, of course, Trivia. In addition to learning fun facts about random trivia categories, we also continue to learn a lot about each other. Alex Adamsky, for instance, is really into Robocop and takes every opportunity available to talk about how great it is. “Robocop” has also become our default answer for questions we truly don’t know.
Yamini Yedetore discovered a special affinity for vocabulary questions — especially when they involve finding mashups of words (like a clue involving Sweden and Vodka, referring to “Svedka”).
Charlie Gordon is undoubtedly the backbone of the team, bringing expansive knowledge of U.S. presidents, world geography, and Taylor Swift. In the words of Izzy Rankin, “I think [Charlie] was born to do trivia.”
This past “season” of Trivia started at the end of September. Scores were tallied for 10 consecutive weeks, and the top teams from each bar were invited to the Tournament of Champions (TOC), which was held on January 21st at Joe’s on Weed Street. There were over 100 teams in attendance!
Frank’s Monkeys had a blast at the TOC — Izzy joined the team with less than 24 hours’ notice to round out our 8-person squad. Prior to the final round, all teams got to participate in a couple bonus rounds of Music Bingo. In addition to his insane amount of knowledge about obscure European sports and 90’s-00’s network sitcoms, Tikhon “T” Pachin carried the team through music bingo with his proficiency in “dad rock!"
The team was also thrilled to get BOTH final round trivia questions correct! According to the final standings, Frank’s Monkeys landed in the upper 1/3 of top Trivia teams throughout the Chicagoland area at a satisfactory #33.
We can’t wait for another chance to test our wits at the next Tournament of Champions! In preparation, we have been seeking a new “home” bar, balancing commute distances and personal schedules for all team members as we weigh our options. A recent decisive first place finish at Fatpour (that came with a generous cash prize of $75 towards our next bar tab!) has us feeling confident in a strong upcoming Trivia season for Frank’s Monkeys.
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