Introducing games at work

My office admin recently had the idea to spring for pizza at work to boost morale. I offered to bring games.

I get pretty excited when it comes to introducing new people to gaming, so I brought a lot of "gateway games," not really knowing my co-workers personally well enough to judge their tastes in play. I also didn't know how many people would show up to a pizza luncheon, as a good number of people attached to my site work from home.

I brought For Sale (BGG, BUY ME!), Guillotine (BGG, BUY ME!), Villa Paletti (BGG, BUY ME!), Ricochet Robots (BGG, BUY ME!), Dragon Delta (BGG, BUY ME!, Apples to Apples (BGG, BUY ME!), Polarity (BGG, BUY ME!), Wheedle BGG, BUY ME!), and Sitting Ducks Gallery (BGG, BUY ME!).

As you can tell, a spread of games: mostly in the 3-4, 3-6, or 4-8 player range. I even brought a cool two-player abstract game (now! with magnets!) just in case. Most are lighter, with a good dash of player interaction and the possibility for depth. I didn't expect even half of these to get play time, but I was hoping for the opportunity to pitch them in the hopes of attracting interest.

Due to a variety of factors, games lunch got rescheduled twice: Each time I brought a rolling suitcase o' games, and each time I got strange looks from my coworkers and moving jokes. I did get to show some off before the final game day- most people looked at them blankly with staring incomprehension. I did manage to suss out a few potential gamers at the office: one guy used to play Diplomacy and Risk, one guy knows Settlers, another guy said "Oh, these are beer-and-pretzel games" because he used to play Titan. Not Titan: the Arena, the newer clever card betting game, but Titan: the older complex and long chit-based battle combat game.

Regardless, when game day actually happened (for real-real), we only played one six-player round of Apples to Apples. I think the choice may have intimidated some people, or perhaps they just had meetings to attend.

Anyone have any tales of successfully introducing games to coworkers?