{"id":22913,"date":"2008-04-01T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-04-01T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.msdn.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/2008\/04\/01\/pranksters-breathe-a-sigh-of-relief-there-will-never-be-a-building-7\/"},"modified":"2008-04-01T10:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-04-01T10:00:00","slug":"pranksters-breathe-a-sigh-of-relief-there-will-never-be-a-building-7","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/20080401-00\/?p=22913","title":{"rendered":"Pranksters breathe a sigh of relief: There will never be a Building 7"},"content":{"rendered":"

It is a longstanding prank at Microsoft’s main Redmond campus to send an unsuspecting new employee to building 7<\/a> under the pretense of having a meeting or needing to pick up something. There is no such building on the main Microsoft campus. This nonexistent building has also been used as a sort of inside joke. For example, if somebody invites you to a meeting in Building 7<\/a>, they’re probably inviting you off campus to take a break from work.\n A few years ago, there was a vacancy in a small business park a very short walk from the main Microsoft campus. (You don’t even have to cross the street to get there.) I thought it would be great if somebody leased the space and opened a bar called Building 7<\/i>. It could have a back room decorated like a Microsoft meeting room, complete with WiFi and a large monitor. Then somebody could legitimately invite you to a meeting in Building 7, and people could use it as a cover story: “Sorry, I’m going to be working late tonight. Team meeting in Building 7.”\n The announcement in February 2006 of a major expansion of the main Redmond campus<\/a> came with a little map<\/a>, and people with way too much time on their hands pored over the unreadably tiny print on the map and noticed a little 7<\/i> printed on the orange building in the upper right corner. They quietly fretted that a piece of Microsoft history was vanishing and that they’ll have to come up with a new prank to play on the new-hires.<\/p>\n

In June 2007, pranksters (and people with a nostalgic streak) breathed a sigh of relief. The real estate department<\/a> announced that the new building tentatively labelled 7<\/i> on the map will now be known as Building 37. In deference to Microsoft tradition, the name Building 7<\/i> has been officially retired. There will never be a Building 7. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is a longstanding prank at Microsoft’s main Redmond campus to send an unsuspecting new employee to building 7 under the pretense of having a meeting or needing to pick up something. There is no such building on the main Microsoft campus. This nonexistent building has also been used as a sort of inside joke. For […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1069,"featured_media":111744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-22913","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-oldnewthing","tag-other"],"acf":[],"blog_post_summary":"

It is a longstanding prank at Microsoft’s main Redmond campus to send an unsuspecting new employee to building 7 under the pretense of having a meeting or needing to pick up something. There is no such building on the main Microsoft campus. This nonexistent building has also been used as a sort of inside joke. For […]<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22913","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1069"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22913"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22913\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22913"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22913"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/devblogs.microsoft.com\/oldnewthing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22913"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}