We got a DVD/TV for presentations. I needed to test it, and I eat lunch an hour later than anyone else, because, as a sysadmin, my most productive hour of the day is when everyone is off the computers.
I decided to test it with Office Space. Then people started creeping in. By the end, I had all the way to one of the vice presidents in with us.
Then we had to watch it again the next day because everyone insisted the other VP had to see it.
I consider that a glorious and true productive waste of time and team building experience.
I actually am a referee at WhirlyBall in Atlanta, GA ( Whirlyball Atlanta ) and the vast majority of our business is corporate “team-building” events. The referee job is mostly a ‘party-host’ type of position, and I live to entertain the bored office-dwellers on their “day out”. Some people are pretty skeptical upon walking into yet another “corporate team-building” excersice, but once the see the full bar and actually play Whirlyball, their attitude always pulls a full reversal (I’ve never had anyone not have a good time). There are about 30 Whirlyballs around the continental U.S., so if there is one in your area, you should definitely check it out. Anyway, I was just excited to read that someone else was familiar with Whirlyball!
Coincidentally, this is my first ever post on the SDMB, even though I’ve been lurking since about mid-2001. I’m a musician/bartender/Whirlyball ref, for anyone who cares to know The SDMB may be the best thing to ever happen to the internet (next to free porn, anyway.)
Megabytes?
My team building was all on-site. Skiing across the floor with wooden skis and piling as many cow-orkers as possible onto a 2-foot-square platform. (“Get your hand off my ass”) The most successful one was when the teams had to design a way to drop an unboiled egg from a 6-foot height onto the floor without it breaking, given Scotch tape and a plastic straw. I was elected captain and did most of the thinking/building and the cushion made out of short sections of the straw, taped onto the egg in layers, actrually worked. I was able to stay on with the agency and get lung congestion from all the office smoking. Lucky me.
At least the team building exercises I go to with my company never make that mistake! When we have our company retreats, it’s three days or so – and while the last two days are classes and meetings, the first day is team building. But whatever the team building thing is, there are coolers of beer salted all over. Given our propensity for drinking, I suspect we’ll never have to do a ropes course.
Luckily we never have enough time for the department I am in to go off and do anything teambuilding, but…
We had 4 permanent employees and 1 temp when I joined the department last August. By October we had 6 temps [2 ‘permanent ones’ and 4 that kept running away because the work level terrified them…] and then in december we lost 1 permanent employee so just added another perm from an in company hire. We have varied the number of temps and slowly been hiring the good ones to stay in so now there are 10 employees and 2 temps. 2 of the regular employees, one of the new in house hires and 2 ex temps and I just hit it off - the chemistry between us is great.
Our idea of team building involves going to the nearest indian casino for sunday brunches, shopping expeditions to Kittery Maine, picknics in a local park and just hanging out in general.
We work together fantastically. The other ex temps and the 2 current temps seem to have formed their own team … but oddly enough ours is the most productive.
The bosses just sort of shake their heads and wonder about us, but the parties sort of work for us, we dont talk about work at all=)
We couldn’t get raises for TWO FUCKING YEARS! but, they could still spend the money on some crappy fish throwing program. What the hell? I wanted a lousy 2% so I could keep pace with my rent, but apparently, $800 would have broken the bank.
I don’t get it. I would rather go off on some stupid corporate boondoggle any day of the week rather than sit at my stupid cube actually working. What’s the big deal? You hang out with some people you hang out with every day anyway, maybe you endure some bullshit motivational speaker or Outward Bound challenge that no one takes seriously anyway and have a few beers and burgers.
My suggestion is that if your job or coworkers make you so miserable that you can’t even do something that is supposed to be fun with them, you should look for a better job.
Personally I think they are a colossal waste of time and money. My current company flew our entire North American team (about 150 people back then) to Dallas for what ended up being a weekend of drinking excessively, dumb motivational exercises and basically just hanging out grabassing. A dot-com consulting firm I worked for in the 90s flew 1000 employees and their familes to Disney World for the same thing. This one idiot I worked with “thought it was great because he got to meet so many people from other offices”. I’m like “name three new people you’ve met”. He couldn’t name one.
My gripe with it is that managers are constantly telling us they don’t have money to get us jpb-specific training or tools to actually make us more productive, but they blow scads of cash on crap like this.
Personally, I think it’s too hard for them to help employees on an individual basis. They don’t want to be bothered finding out what their people need to be more productive in their particular jobs, and plan and budget for whatever that is. But this stuff – it’s a “one size fits all” approach – is much easier to implement, if unfortunately useless.
Good advice. Can you perhaps recommend a career where I won’t be expected to put on a silly t-shirt and help colleagues I barely know try to squeeze their fat asses through a wall of rope netting in a public park? A reckless fool, I sought a job in technical documentation, not realizing all the duties it would entail…
Didn’t you sort of answer your own question there, msmith537?
They ARE a colossal waste of time and money.
Money: When we’re told that we won’t get raises for two years, but then get shipped off to the woods or whatever for “team building,” you can bet I resent that money is being spent on that which could have been better directed at, say, keeping up with cost of living increases. Or at giving me the software I need to do my job. Or sending me to actual training so I can do my job better. Or sending me to a conference of my peers in the industry, so I can learn how to do my job better. There are lots of sensible ways to spend company money that result in actual improved performance, rather than (at best) a fleeting feeling camaraderie that lasts shorter than my hangover.
Time: Guess what! I HAVE WORK TO DO! And magically, none of the deadlines I have shift to accommodate some boneheaded outing. Most of my work supports internal clients who are not in a reporting relationship to my managers. They, in turn, are supporting external clients who, I can promise you, don’t give a good goddamn about what I may be up to. Sometimes managers get it into their heads that the best way to keep work on track is to shift the bullshit team-building stuff to… everyone’s personal time. It is to laugh.
The key phrase there is supposed to be. Our sailboat racing exercise was supposed to be fun. It wasn’t. It was hell on my middle-aged back and butt, it left me with rope burns all over my hands, and it was very stressful for someone who had never been on a small boat before.
How about if, instead of quitting my job, I do work at my job, and choose my own recreational activities for my own time?
Well, I’m a firm believer in if people don’t want to do an activity, I’d rather not waste the money on them.
Well, first of all, your team building funds probably come from a different budget from payroll. Even if it didn’t, I doubt the cost of your corporate fun event will amount to much of a raise if split among 50 or however many employees.
Wow…you’re a big man :rolleyes:
You know, I read posts like this and it occurs to me that maybe the issue isn’t your coworkers or your company trying to do something nice for their employees. Maybe the problem is that you’re just a jerk?
It has nothing to do with what career you pick. It has to do with the company’s culture. Look, I worked for a company that used to interrupt your workday with a bunch of jerkoffs firing Nerf guns and then bringing in a cart full of ice cream. My manager at the time kept rescheduling a movie night for the team at her corporate appartment until I ran out of excuses to not go. I didn’t enjoy these particular team building events because a) found them juvenille and stupid and b) I didn’t like my coworkers because they were juvenille and stupid. They seemed to think a 25 year old should be playing with Star Wars figurines and Nerf guns while I belived a 25 year old should be out enjoying Boston’s night life, getting drunk and trying to get laid.
The company wasn’t going to change their warped culture (although the Dot com crash did it for them) so I found a similar job but with a more mature (well maybe immature in a more grown up way is a better way to put it) crowd.
I agree, provided that it happens *entirely * on company time. It’s all good harmless fun when it gets me out of my cube. It’s completely unfuckingacceptable when it cuts into my actual life.
That’s the thing. We used to have these stupid retreats once a year. Well, the State Director was out of Buffalo, so we all had to trek to fucking Buffalo, NY to have them. I live in Albany. Could we meet in Syracuse (in the middle)? Nope. Could we change locations? Nope.
So that meant it would be at least 2 nights in the hotel, plus five hours of driving time, and then they would make you share rooms with someone! I know lots of people - including myself - who can’t sleep in a hotel room well and hate sharing - and besides, I don’t want to have to drive all the way to Buffalo.
Yes, I go to work to work. I actually rather like the work I do. Plus I’m an admin. I am an admin, and I don’t make a lot of money, because I want to put in my 8 hours and go home and not think about it. This is the exchange I have made. I don’t need corporate team-building activities to make me work harder.
I don’t particularly care for the people I work with and I do not want to spend my “non-work” time socializing. I’ve got a life outside of this place which is the only thing keeping me from wholesale slaughter.
I like the people I work with. Doesn’t mean I want to spend more than the 40 hours a week I already spend at work, with them. (Wow, that was awkward.) The thing is, they’re nice people and funny but we have little in common. None of my hobbies interest them and none of theirs interest me.
Irrelevant. That artificial distinction is simply another layer of bullshit that evades the issue of misallocation of funds.
If it amounts to two cents a year, I’d rather have the two cents.
…ponders…
Nah. The issue is still incompetent managers blowing money on nonsense and thereby hanging a lantern on each failure to allocate money on something that would actually be worthwhile (training, resources, raises, etc).
Some places have functional cultures; some places have dysfunctional cultures. “Team-Building” events cribbed from old episodes of “Romper Room” are examples of the latter.
I mostly do like the people I work with, and I socialize with them occasionally, but I will NOT be **required ** to outside of work hours.
For me, it’s about the time. My time is mine. You pay me for forty hours a week, and that’s what you get. Not a a single second more, unless **I ** feel that it’s necessary.
My feelings exactly. My job occasionally requires evening and weekend work. That’s fine, because it’s work and it’s what I have to do to get the job done. But my employer has no right to have a say in my social life. When I socialize with people, it will be on my terms, not the organization’s.
The SDMB may be the best thing to ever happen to the internet (next to free porn, anyway.) 