I need to come up with a game (preferably with two teams) for my job. I need to come up with this by tomorrow night. it can be anything. the more creative the better. last week we had a game where everyone wrote a fact about themselves… it was put in a hat and everyone had to guess who the fact was about…(Just for an example) thanks!
Guess what- people hate shit like this! That’s why movies like Office Space and the series The Office mercilessly lampoon these sick facets of corporate culture. You want your employees to bond, drop this sort of retardation.
Trust me.
I recommend a game called “Decent Wages, Pleasant Working Conditions, Reasonable Expectations.”
This game generally helps employees bond and tends to aid productivity and team morale.
The kindergarten games played by most corporate-bonding overseers are, as Freejooky correctly points out, almost universally loathed.
Please, no more games. It’s been ages since I’ve been in an environment like that, but I remember it clearly. The ONLY reason for these things is that management mistakenly believes that it would be easier and cheaper to have games than to treat their employees like adults.
If you want your employees to bond, have a company picnic or something. Even then, you’d better realize that some people don’t like to socialize with their coworkers, and some people just barely tolerate some specific coworkers.
If you want to improve employee morale, say it with money. Or offer sincere praise. Don’t treat your employees like kids. Even teens don’t like to be treated like kids.
wow… well lets clear some things up. I’m not a manager… far from it… im kitchen help trying to work my way through college. it is a requirement that one of the staff members has to come up with a game when it is their week; well, this is my week.
its also very disappointing that an administrator on the SDMB would shine their own personal beliefs on what i should do instead of a game. before i get knocked for asking this question, please realize the validity to it before you tell me why i shouldnt.
I enjoy office space very much and couldnt agree with it more. however, I am an employee and value the money i make and would like to keep my job. I am strapped for ideas which is why I ask. I’m not trying to start any debates here on whether or not i should do this game. The orders are from above and i’m asking for help.
You should have said this in the first place. It would have prevented us from treating you like an idiot. Your question’s really been answered for you…under the circumstances, any choice you make will be a sucky waste of time for everyone involved, but that’s not your fault. Make something up, don’t worry about whether it will be any fun or not, because it won’t.
Sorry you have to deal with this infantile crap.
Lynn was not speaking as an admin. Had she been doing so she would have closed her post with the words “for the Straight Dope”. Her post was on her own behalf, not on behalf of the boards, and FWIW absent the knowledge that you’re being required to do this she’s right. People hate this sort of shit.
Perhaps an anonymous suggestion to your bosses about the loathesome nature of these stupid games would be in order.
My suggestion for a game would be, “Tell me what useful things you could be doing now rather than wasting time playing these stupid bonding games?”
Okay, this is pretty silly but based on your other game (putting a fact in a hat and guessing who it was) I guess you aren’t taking a lot of time for the games and things like bowling or darts competitions might take too long. What if you gave everyone a piece of paper and crayons and had them draw a picture of a famous person or the house they grew up in or something like that, collect them anonymously and then have everyone guess who drew what? Okay, maybe not the best but it might spark an idea or two. (like even grim ones such as what would be your last meal if you knew it was going to be your last…then guess who would eat what). The bring in a baby picture thing is funny sometimes.
I don’t think these employee games are as negative as everyone says. Sure, they can be boring and stupid but sometimes you find out you have more in common with someone you didn’t know too well to start with, or you get to know the quiet workers a bit better. And if you are in a kitchen, I know that the waiters vs. cooks rivalry sometimes comes up and you could think of a way to intensify it or to make it less. I also assume you are getting paid to do it, so why is everyone getting so worked up about it? I mean, if you had to travel 2 hours on your own gas and your own time to some employee retreat in the middle of the woods, stay there for two days without pay, blah blah, well, then there’d be an issue. This doesn’t sound like that. It sounds more like a social mixer that takes an hour or so.
Man, what do I know? Anyway, good luck. Do some searches for party games or teambuilding on the web, man, lots of ideas out there.
Cheers,
Powers
Man, what a pile-on!
You could do the old stand-by where everyone has the name of a famous person (historical or ficitional or whatever) on their back. People go around and ask each other yes-or-no questions to try to figure out whose name is on their own back.
Pin The Tail on the Boss :eek:
Well, here is my suggestion.
http://www.eblong.com/zarf/werewolf.html
That is a general rules description. You can play the game without fancy cards just using playing cards as long as everyone knows what card is what. It is fun, most people get a laugh.
Hope this helps…
Mike
General advice - don’t be any sillier than you have to be or take yourself too seriously. Clearly, some folks are already bitter…
Try to have a point. Sometimes this is as simple as making sure people know each other’s names, so they don’t meet for the first time while an angry customer is trying to decide which one of them to rip limb-from-limb. If you work in a high turnover environment, this may be a big part of the point.
One activity I like is to simply go around the room and have people tell one thing they’re good at, or an accomplishment they’re proud of. This can come in handy, when you need to find someone who can read French, for example. Depending on the crowd, they may be more comfortable working in pairs, and introducing their neighbor to the group with their skill or accomplishment, rather than bragging on themselves.
Get a good paper and pencil RPG going. I reccomend Paranoia, it is easy to learn and play, and nothing builds trust like that game. 
I’ve yet to figure out why the notion that an admin/mod couldn’t possibly simply participate in a thread. Is it a shock that Lynn, et al, have opinions of their own? Personally, I like seeing mod opinions, whether I agree or not, because at least they’re being part of the game, instead of ref’ing from on high.
That said, I like twickster’s suggestion. Quick, painless, and not overly cheesy.
Calling all my neighbors. Stupid, but easy, cost free, and can be fun.
Everyone sits in a circle with one less chair than people. Someone stands in the middle and says “Calling all my neighbors who…” and then they add something they have say “who have blue eyes”. Then everyone with blue eyes stands up and tries to find another chair. The person left over has to come up with the next thing.
Warning, this does turn very sexual very quickly unless rules are laid out ahead of time.
Or even better: Beat the Hell Out Of The Boss
… with Nerf Bats.
I worked for a corney-ass dot-com consulting firm that liked this infantile shit. We used to do things like:
-Team cheers at the start/end of each meeting (usually some combination of clapping and stomping and "whoooooahh team!!!"s)
-“Full-breach ice cream assault day” (or whatever the fuck it was called) where one team would interupt another team’s deadline by assualting them with Nerf guns and then everyone wastes time eating ice cream for an hour
-Ice breaking activities - Everyone goes around the room and shares some personal shit like what made us join the company (apparently “because it paid more than my last job” is not an acceptible answer)
-Super Saturday recruiting events - Basically, instead of spending weekends with friends, we get to rent out Gillians in Boston (a 4 story arcade/bar/pool hall/dance club) and entertain recruits. Proving my theory that even the most fun activities can be ruined by work.
-Team dinners and outings - Nothing helps that Work Life Ballance like forcing people to go to social events IN ADDITION to their normal 60+ hour work week.
You want some good Team Building Events?
Office Beruit (Beer Pong) - Set up two 6.5.4.3.2.1 pyramids of 9 ounce plastic cups on a standard conference table. Evenly fill the contents of each pyramid with 3 beers each side. Two teams of two then take turns tossing standard ping-pong balls at the cups. Hit a full cup, they drink that beer. Hit an empty cup or “air-ball” off the back of the table, drink one of your beers. First team out of beer loses.
Office Asshole - Same as regulat “Asshole”. An “Uno” like beer game based on humiliation and degredation…kind of like work.
Smash My Car!! - Pass out festivly colored sledgehammers and each person takes a wack at the bosses car
Office Pinatta - Take a standard 17" monitor and hang it from the ceiling. Each player takes turns wacking at it with a pole while blindfolded.
The Most Dangerous Team Building Game - Each player gets a rifle (probably should be one that shoots Nerf balls or paintballs, but it’s your choice). Give your boss a five minute head start to hide in the cubicle jungle. The…hunt…begins.
Cubicle Jousting - Two players face off sitting in those expensive Steelcase ergonomic roller chairs. Run a rope tied from each chair, past the opposite chair. Each “knight” has two or three “squires” who run with the ropes as fast as they can, drawing the knights at each other at high speed. The knights can be armed with any common object that is suitable as a lance.
Damn, msmith537, did we work at the same company? I swear I know you … and I certainly admire your team building suggestions. “The Most Dangerous Team Building Game” – Heh. Heh. Heh. I say, Johnnyt27, I believe you have a winner.