Oh, good. Another team building exercise

The BBQ Pit
1

I’ve tried. I’ve really tried to go along with your stupid team building exercises. Some of them, like ‘two truths and a lie’ actually turned out to be mildly amusing, but this time it’s gone too far.

I am not going to be closer to the ‘team’ for having gone through this. The only possible result from this is that I get pissed off. And that has indeed already happened. In the end, I really just want to ask you this one simple question:

DON’T YOU HAVE FUCKING WORK TO DO?

'Cause, you know, I do, and it’s not going to get done if I have to do this too:

A collage? You’re fucking kidding me, right?

Here are the questions, along with my attempts at a) honest answers, and b) what I really want to say. Neither of which are going to be looked upon kindly if I actually submitted them.

Someone, please make this stop. I have actual work to do.

2

You can make this, and your workload go away with two little words: I quit. :wink:

3

At least when they do team building where I work, we get alcohol.

And let me tell you, it really lessens the amount of complaining about team building when you get to do it with a beer in hand! Perhaps you can suggest that to your boss?

4

Today we received an email about a “professional development opportunity” regarding “alternative assessment” (translation: a workshop on ways to dumb down our grading process so that fewer of the student morons fail our courses). The person organizing the workshop chirped (yes, I could HEAR the chirp in email) “please RSVP, because one of the activities involves cookies and we need to know how many to bring!”

I work at a community college, not a daycare. Gah.

5

Every time somebody bitches about team building, I think of our sailboat racing team build that ended with the manager who planned it turning green and puking his guts into the harbor. God, that was beautiful.

Thank you for reminding me of it.

6

You are so lucky. My boss decided I needed mandatory Life Coaching. Actually, she was having some of her staff get certified as life coaches, and the rest of us as more or less practice dummies for them. It involved filling out this very personal ‘wellness assessment’ to start, which I refused to do. Then she spent two weeks trying to coach me into being life coached. She finally gave up when the hired gun life coach guru told her participation had to be voluntary.

7

Muahahaha!:smiley:

Please, Freddy, would you mind telling the whole story/more details? K-thx!

8

First of all, I loved your take on that test, drewbert. You are a kindred spirit.

I’d love to see HR try to give that test to my group, bunch of misanthropic malcontents that we are from the boss on down. They can’t even bribe us with cake and raffles to get us to go to the all hands meetings.

I feel for you, my brother.

9

I think that should be a cardinal rule of the New World Order: Corporate team building exercises MUST involve alcohol, paid for by the manager who insisted on holding the team building exercise.

10

Thanks hajario. I truly am stuck on how to answer this honestly, stay within the rules, and actually not be an ass. I really hate “favorite color” sorts of questions.

Anyway, I have well passed the deadline. Tomorrow may prove interesting.

11

Write in your answers: infrared and Gondwanaland, that would be great. For your secret code use “QQQQ”.

12

Based on my analysis of your personality via psychic powers -

Your favorite color is black and least favorite is pink.

You would like to visit Australia.

Website: I’m going with entertainment for the SDMB.

Headphones, that’ll work.

Day off - cooking and computers.

State: California

TV - I’m getting poor reception on this one, but I think it’s cartoons.

Dream meal: Spaghetti and meatballs.

Famous person: Albert Einstein

Evening person

Alone

Chipmunk is good. You and your cat can enjoy it together.

Code: 2BAD

Come back and let me know how well your coworkers think I did.

13

Go for interpretive dance! :slight_smile:

14

Harriet, you’re actually not too far off on some of those…

Apollyon, that’s just weird. There’s seriously a long-running joke about me and a co-worker making presentations in interpretive dance. You’re as psychic as Harriet!

15

I find that team building exercises really bring the staff together in a united loathing and contempt for the douche bags who subject us to that twaddle. Our arts and crafts projects usually end up being bossturd voodoo dolls made of wads of tape.

16

My recipe: Take 1 manager with a team building idea, combine with 1 team in need of building. Place in locked room. Let steam for 45 min. Turn out survivors.

Results:1 team

17

drewbert, just out of curiousity - did you see the story last year(?) about the contest a European university had for presenting abstracts of Ph.D. theses as interpretive dance?

Here’s a link to it.
Just food for thought. :wink:

18

Secret code?
FOFF

19

Hey, it could be worse. They could lock you in a room for a series of long winded meetings to write a Mission Statement and a Vision Statement.

  • twitch *
20

Oh, it can be worse. The company I am routinely abused by in exchange for money likes to hire outside contractors for their team-building events. That’s right, they can’t even manage to come up with their own psychotwaddle to inflict on us; they have to spend money on snake-oil salesmen, who cart us off somewhere to do annoying things in rubbishy places. (Seriously, one place was a bankrupt dude ranch that had gone badly to seed. No horses or anything, just decaying outbuildings and some schmucks with mail-order degrees.) The very best thing that happened that day was the bus driver getting lost on the way there. Regrettably, he eventually found it. I blame cell phones.

They would get much better results using that money to spring for a nice lunch (even without alcohol), where everyone could sit and chat over a good meal. It at least wouldn’t make us more sullen and rebellious.