You win
I feel for you.
American Thanksgiving is coming up. The customers are all in the U.S., so the company is not open that day. My centre, however, is in Canada. All of the agents get the day off, because they are paid hourly and there is no work for them to do. Management gets to have a special meeting so we can improve our morale and become a better team. It’ll be fun. Honest. There will be koosh balls and Skittles. Y’know, to encourage professionalism.
In order to minimize the impact of this meeting on what would otherwise be a day off, it starts with breakfast at 7:00 am and goes until about noon. I’m sure that’s great if your regular shift starts at 6:00 am. I don’t work that shift.
There’s nothing that sets you up for a good team and morale building exercise more than getting up five hours earlier than usual.
When I dropped by the boss’s office today she had no less than three books of team building exercises sitting on her desk.
If I were a religious man at least I could console myself with the idea that this was hell and I had done something really fun in order to deserve it.
Before I quit the big company that had all this twaddle to start my own shop we had this crap all the time.
The worst was the mandatory all day Saturday session that was scheduled 2 months in advance. This way everybody could arrange babysitters or other schedules to be there.
I was the only support team member that worked second shift that ended at midnight. I HAD to be back at 7:00am for this crap. The rest of the 2nd shift crews all had their session in the afternoon like a regular work day. Because I was in a twilight zone on the Org chart I was lumped in with the day crew.
So there I am, 4 hours of sleep, cranky and it was fucking canceled because of some crappy reason I don’t remember. Everybody got sent home but paid half a day for it.
In my experience, team building exercises begin when the organization is falling apart. Brush up your resume - you might need it.
Since I’ve moved out to Silicon Valley where we actually do things, I’ve had no team building, unless you count beer blasts and picnics and the like. Teams get really built doing things that are productive, not climbing up walls and falling into peoples arms (which I’ve done.)
Team building exercise:
Floor 3 is Red
Floor 2 is Blue
Open Arena has been installed on the network drive, readygo. Every instance of teabagging, use of the term “cocksucking faggot,” and every frag brings you one step closer to a promotion
Last team-building exercise I went on, it was a weekend retreat run by a couple of “therapists” - a married couple in which the wife was white and the husband was black. The team-building consisted of the wife blathering on about how non-racist she was, as evidenced by her BLACK husband, and oh in case we hadn’t noticed, her husband was BLACK, and as a white lady she had taken a lot of flack for this but she was proud of the fact that he was BLACK.
The couple (did I mention the husband was BLACK?) then had us go around in a circle saying what we disliked the most about each other. That built us into a team, yessirree.
On Monday, one of our staff resigned. I’m sure more would have, had they not needed the income.
I feel the urge to commit suicide by jumping off a lego tower.
I haven’t done a team building exercise for several years now. In fact I stopped having to do them when I started working in the best team environment I have ever been in. We get on terrifically at work - all cooperation, no back stabbing, no tantrums, constant feedback.
Once in a while someone will suggest an outing - dinner somewhere new, a comedy club, a river cruise to a fish and chip shop and nearly everyone will go. Even people who worked on our team years ago and have moved on come to our outings.
And not one team building exercise required, just a no dickheads employment policy and a bunch of people who like having fun while working hard in a high profile work area.
I work with all men (about 6 locally, but another 16 or so nationally). Our team building usually consists of drinking booze and sometimes shooting pool. We head out about once a month.
But yeah, I did the stupid corporate team building things in the past – luckily it was just a brief phase at the company when it was a new concept.
Our management, at the insurance company where I worked, decided that our actuarial team build would be sailboat racing on Lake Michigan.
Have you ever partaken of this activity? I’m sure there are some Dopers who enjoy it, but I didn’t. The small boat was hell on my middle-aged back and butt, the work was unfamiliar and physically demanding, and if you daydreamed and enjoyed the scenery for even a minute some crewman was barking at you to loosen the jib or pull on the halyard or some such shit that reminded me that I went to college so I wouldn’t have to do manual labor.
And that was during the morning, when the weather was nice.
The weather in Chicago can change on a dime. Over lunch the wind picked up and the temperature dropped about 15 degrees. When we went back out after lunch, my boat mutinied after a few minutes of getting tossed, frozen, and soaked. We returned to port.
The other boats didn’t. We waited and waited, and they finally returned two hours later.
My boss’s boss, who had planned the boondoggle, was on one of those boats. He was seasick.
Now when I say “seasick”, I don’t mean that he felt a little queasy. I mean that he was sick. His face had turned emerald green, and he staggered off the boat and curled up on the grass in a fetal position for almost an hour.
Then he staggered to the edge of the pier and retched, violently and repeatedly, into Belmont Harbor.
In that moment, it was all worth it. In fact, in that moment, life was worth it. Sometimes, justice is served.
It’s clear that most of you do not understand the objective of team-building exercises from the viewpoint of senior management. It is not what they tell you it is. Its real objective is to see hoiw much crap their employees will put up with to keep their jobs. From this point of view, team building exercises are very successful. And in the current economic client, expect more aggressive team-building exercises. Think “Fear Factor.” Think “A Shot at Love with Tia Tequila.”
So the lesson here is, that team building exercise really worked for you. 
I feel for you all. There was actually a band of self-taught team builders at my place of employment that named themselves the** Diversi-team**.
That’s all you really need to know about them.
Great, I had just about stopped having flashbacks.:mad:
We’re facing layoffs in April. We’ve already lost at least 50 workers in our dicision due to retirement/leaving and their positions not being hired. Our caseloads have increased 50% in the past two years. The new motto is “Do More With Less” (seriously, there are posters up in the break room saying that, along with lines of “encouragement”). So far today I’ve fielded 18 phone calls, none of which were less than 5 minutes quick responses.
So what shall our government due to help us through these trying times?
Half day team efficiency crap presented by outside companies. Yes, please take us away from our desks for half the day so phone calls can pile up, orders can be delayed, and we spend the next two days playing catch up. That’s efficient. And it’s paid by the lovely taxpayers. Let’s say we DON’T do this crap and KEEP one or two of the positions, hunh?
We also start EVERY damn meeting with getting to know you stuff. I really do not care what a coworkers’ favorite stuffed animal was when she was 4, just get on with the show!
Oh dear, technically Infrared is not a color yet black is.
[/nitpick]
hot cocoa, Spanish chocolate (with a choice of freshly made churros or freshly toasted baguette), coffee, capuchino, milk of all grades of fatness, lactose-free dairy preparation, liquid yoghurt, floats and smoothies
and we don’t mean out of his departmental budget either!
This makes me thankful that all we do is a “huddle” every day where the boss reads us a newsletter made up by upper management with a “thought for the day” and “healthy tip for the day” and all sorts of useless brainwashy info about why our organization is the absolute best ever in the world.
So let me ask;
When, as a manager, you have a group of people with diverse levels of intelligence, social capabilities, and skills, who NEED to function as a team, what methods do you all suggest to bring a team environment to a place that so badly needs it?
I want to know this because I’m faced with this challenge now, and I don’t want this to be the result.
<< Your presentation can be in the form of a story, picture, collage, graph, food, song, photo, power point, gift, or anything you would like.>>
Powerpoint, eh? Obnoxious colors and animation? The possibilities are staggering.