Team Building Exercise

[Knowed_Out]

At my last job, our teams were supposed to go on scavenger hunt type assignments and get our pictures taken at the locations. We were then to meet at a bar at the end of the workday and show Power Point presentations of our endeavors.

Our team didn’t want to go running around, so we went back inside and photoshopped everything. I put our PP together on our team leader’s laptop while the organizers made their speeches. I finished just before they announced it was our turn up. Our slides had us standing on the moon and atop the ancient pyramids. We got the “Most Creative” award.

[aruvqan]

@etv78

@aruvqan

I had one of those bullshit fall backwards/trust building exercises. Also some sort of build something out of random shit to do some assinine goal crap.

I log off of a 10 hour shift on the phones, dog ass tired and all I want to do is go home and sleep. I get shoved on a bus with a bunch of strangers that I don’t know and hauled off out into the fucking woods somewhere. No breakfast is offered, because everybody else was day shift and they got to eat breakfast right after they woke up and before they had to show up at work. SO here we are, I am starving [and diabetic] and seriously grumpy after building some stupid rube goldberg crap and told to stand on a box and fall backwards. I ask if there is going to be something to eat any time soon, and I am not going to do anything until I can have something to eat. The assanine bitch from the company that organizes this crap starts insisting that I wont get any type of food until I do their dumbass crap, so I call over the only person I recognize at all, who is in HR and I announce to her loudly that I am diabetic, my blood glucose has tanked, I had already been up all night working the night shift, and this asshole wants me to risk my previously broken back by falling and hoping that a bunch of strangers can catch me, and prevent any further damage to my body … and what was the company disability package like or should I just sue the company they hired to put my life in danger … oddly enough I got fed and excused from any further activity … so I went off and ate, and found a nice corner and curled up and napped until it was time to go back.

Ever since then I refuse to do any company sponsored crap unless I drive my own vehicle there. I am never getting caught where I can not leave, or have access to my various meds and snacks. All I actually want from a job is to be properly trained, then left the fuck alone to actually do my damned job. I do not need any warm fuzzies, just actual monetary bonuses now and again.

That’s BS! Making a guy on the graveyard turn around and keep working? Did they know you’re diabetic?

Female =)

It isn’t like I make a great big secret about it =) and it is in any employment record [I have FMLA paperwork for it, because diabetics as a whole have more doctor’s appointments, I see a regular doc, an endocrinologist, an eye doc and a podiatrist a couple times a year each. I am serious about keeping all my extremities and vision until I drop dead =) ]

[FE3O4ENAIL]

@Knowed_Out

At my last job, our teams were supposed to go on scavenger hunt type assignments and get our pictures taken at the locations. We were then to meet at a bar at the end of the workday and show Power Point presentations of our endeavors.

Our team didn’t want to go running around, so we went back inside and photoshopped everything. I put our PP together on our team leader’s laptop while the organizers made their speeches. I finished just before they announced it was our turn up. Our slides had us standing on the moon and atop the ancient pyramids. We got the “Most Creative” award.

Most excellent.

[DarrenS]

@BrotherCadfael

@etv78

Work ISN’T supposed to be fun! It’s SUPPOSED to be work! Now, it’d be nice if you enjoyed coming to work, and not become a homicidal maniac. The idea is to make money and put a roof over your head, and food on the table!

As I always tell my kids, when they complain about their jobs, *“There’s a reason they call it ‘work’ and have to pay you to do it.”
*

If you guys are joking, haha, good one, whoosh, you got me.

In case you’re not: if you’re a minimum wage burger-flipper with a McJob, then, yes, work isn’t meant to be fun – it’s for paying bills, buying stuff, whatever you need money for.

If you’ve spent many years in college, learning a specialized profession – well, if the place you’re working isn’t fun, or what you’re doing isn’t fun, you have options, and you should exercise them and find something that is fun that people are willing to pay you to do. If you have skills that are in demand, you should be able to find a place that pays decent and is fun to work. I’ve managed to do this over the years, and still keep the mortgage paid. The current place has turned miserable, so my resume is already polished.

The attitude I do not subscribe to is that the place you spend most of your waking hours should be at best “not fun” and at worst abject misery, just to pay the bills.

[Cunctator]

The majority of people here simply declined the invitation to go when our last “team building” exercise was mooted. Management very sensibly got the hint and none has been suggested since. It’s been great for morale.

[anu-la1979]

My business school starts off with a week long session of team-building exercises (I know, I can already see some of you sweating bullets). I think this is pretty standard for most of the top programs at this point, I know Chicago Booth has almost exactly the same type of set up.

I was sort of skeptical going in, but it turned out to be a relaxing way of starting the school year. They had a nice combination of events including hiring a chamber orchestra and a conductor and giving us a chance to actually lead the orchestra, Second City actors who came and set up some improv exercises, a day of volunteer activity in the major urban area close to our school and umm, some other stuff that I don’t really remember. And they threw a lot of free food and booze our way.

Really, I’m sitting here doing homework now and flashing back sadly to the pleasant team-building bullshit.

[etv78]

@DarrenS

@BrotherCadfael

As I always tell my kids, when they complain about their jobs, *“There’s a reason they call it ‘work’ and have to pay you to do it.”
*

If you guys are joking, haha, good one, whoosh, you got me.

In case you’re not: if you’re a minimum wage burger-flipper with a McJob, then, yes, work isn’t meant to be fun – it’s for paying bills, buying stuff, whatever you need money for.

If you’ve spent many years in college, learning a specialized profession – well, if the place you’re working isn’t fun, or what you’re doing isn’t fun, you have options, and you should exercise them and find something that is fun that people are willing to pay you to do. If you have skills that are in demand, you should be able to find a place that pays decent and is fun to work. I’ve managed to do this over the years, and still keep the mortgage paid. The current place has turned miserable, so my resume is already polished.

The attitude I do not subscribe to is that the place you spend most of your waking hours should be at best “not fun” and at worst abject misery, just to pay the bills.

Um, Darren, the only advantage a college degree gives you is that you have more/better choices where to WORK to put a roof over your head/food on the table.

[E-Sabbath]

@etv78

Could you’ve channelled your anger with the guy running the activity into being an asshole boss?

Why would he want to do that? The coach goes away. He has to keep working with these people, who would have a memory of him being an asshole.

You know what the best team building exercise was I’ve been involved in?

We got a TV with DVD player in to the AIDS treatment facility I worked in, in the finance department (which contained the IT department). It was going to leave in a week, I had to test it. So I tested it by dragging everyone in during lunch and we watched Office Space. Including my boss and her boss. And yes, we saw some of ourselves in it, but that’s what made it funny.

[etv78]

E-Sabbath, were you supposed to show a specific video? Your post makes me think not, so that’s a BRILLIANT way to test the DVD player! (GREAT flick BTW)

[DarrenS]

@etv78

Um, Darren, the only advantage a college degree gives you is that you have more/better choices where to WORK to put a roof over your head/food on the table.

I wasn’t specifically talking about a college degree. My point was that someone who has spent their time learning to do something they enjoy doing should be able to find a place where they can do it an enjoy those working hours, rather than treating them as drudgery that they have to do to pay the bills. We’re not “working on the railroad” any more – and if you’re okay with the notion that the thing you spend most of your waking hours doing is not supposed to be fun, good for you – but I choose not to spend my life that way. Whenever I’ve gotten to the point in a job where I’m thinking, “The only reason I’m here is to pay the mortgage”, it’s resume time.

I take the attitude that work is supposed to be fulfilling and (gasp) even fun. People who are having fun produce better work.

I’m not talking college degree vs. not; I’m talking skilled vs. unskilled. Being skilled means you’ve taken the time to learn how to do something that not everyone can do; if you don’t enjoy doing it, you’ve picked the wrong skill. (Not you in particular – the general “you”).

[Omi_no_Kami]

My friend’s dad is the head of a 30-some person IT department in a small company. This is his story.

So he was having a fairly average day going about the business of running a department, when he got a call from his boss, who told him that they were paying for each department to go out and do a 3-day team building event, and that his guys were going next week. No wages, of course, but he was nice enough to give everyone in the department a $50 “participation bonus”. So the dad, being fairly accomplished with laying back and thinking of England, shrugs and goes to share the bad news with his team.

Fast forward to the day of the event, where they are required to show up at the office at 5am (!), and quickly herded into vans and driven for three straight hours into the middle of nowhere. Turns out, the “team-building” exercise was going to be survival training with a bunch of corporate BS thrown in on the side, so not only would they get to spend three days doing stupid crap, they were not to be allowed to go home until they had finished.

I guess it was supposed to be one of those “Overcome adversity and weather shared hardship to build a better team,” I don’t really know. But in any case, by the time they got to the campsite, his guys were pissed. They’re introduced to the instructor, who starts the event by assuring everyone that he understands they don’t want to be there, but ultimately it will be good for them and blah blah blah horseshit blah. He then proceeds to put five aluminum cans on sawhorse about 30 feet away from the group and produces a small handgun: the schtick will be that each guy gets three shots at the cans, and anyone who manages to hit a can will get to go home right now. Predictably, most of the department have never shot a gun, so the activity goes as planned and most people miss all of their shots, until it gets to my friend’s father.

Now the father was probably well over 400 pounds, a chain smoker, and disdained most forms of exercise. He also happened to be a crack shot with a pistol, and had apparently done pretty well in state and national marksmanship competitions over the last twenty years, and decided he was going to screw with the guy a bit. His first shot was a bit wide, but with his second he accomplished what he was trying to do, and managed to knock the can over without pushing it off the sawhorse. Satisfied that he’d shown off enough, he casually fired a third shot to knock it off… …and knocked the can upright again. He said that the instructor just kind of stared at him for a moment, and then told them that screw it, with that performance they all deserved to get a free pass.

So about 2/3 of the participants elected to go home and watch TV or hang out with their kids or do whatever IT people do with their time. Apparently management was very happy with how much morale it built.

[E-Sabbath]

@etv78

E-Sabbath, were you supposed to show a specific video? Your post makes me think not, so that’s a BRILLIANT way to test the DVD player! (GREAT flick BTW)

Naw, I was just given vauge instructions that I should test it to make sure it worked. Yep, it worked. And this was long enough ago that Office Space wasn’t a well known movie at that point.

[Jack_Batty]

@DarrenS

I take the attitude that work is supposed to be fulfilling and (gasp) even fun. People who are having fun produce better work.

Darren, Darren, Darren … don’t you know? This is America. We are supposed to work hard, for 60 hours a week, including weekends, from age 16 to 65, with a dour look on our faces, and when the work day is over we are to plop down in our arm chairs, drink beer and ignore our kids until our wives have dinner ready. The ultimate goal in life is, of course, to hang ourselves in our closet at age 66.

Didn’t anyone ever teach you about life?

[Boyo_Jim]

My goal is to die with a million dollar hooker/cocaine debt. I’m almost there. I just need to find someone who will give me a million dollars in hooker/cocaine credits.

[Steve_MB]

We usually have some sort of “exercise”/social after the end-of-fiscal-year rush. The year before last it was some kind of local cruise boat; last year it was a lunch followed by a session at a bowling alley. (Unfortunately, the local transit lines offered no reasonable way to slip back to the office after lunch, and hanging around a bowling alley is far too high a price to pay for a free lunch.) I’ve learned to leave confusing information that leaves everybody under the impression that I’m catching a ride with somebody else and keeping my head down until the rest of the group leaves.

If I’m lucky, budget squeezes will eliminate this nonsense this year.

[DarrenS]

@Jack_Batty

@DarrenS

I take the attitude that work is supposed to be fulfilling and (gasp) even fun. People who are having fun produce better work.

Darren, Darren, Darren … don’t you know? This is America. We are supposed to work hard, for 60 hours a week, including weekends, from age 16 to 65, with a dour look on our faces, and when the work day is over we are to plop down in our arm chairs, drink beer and ignore our kids until our wives have dinner ready. The ultimate goal in life is, of course, to hang ourselves in our closet at age 66.

Didn’t anyone ever teach you about life?

I think you nailed it, Jack

The thing is, a lot of people really do seem to think that way.

By the way, for those that are interested etv78 has taken a break from teambuilding to create a Pit thread on this topic.

[asterion]

@Jack_Batty

@DarrenS

I take the attitude that work is supposed to be fulfilling and (gasp) even fun. People who are having fun produce better work.

Darren, Darren, Darren … don’t you know? This is America. We are supposed to work hard, for 60 hours a week, including weekends, from age 16 to 65, with a dour look on our faces, and when the work day is over we are to plop down in our arm chairs, drink beer and ignore our kids until our wives have dinner ready. The ultimate goal in life is, of course, to hang ourselves in our closet at age 66.

Didn’t anyone ever teach you about life?

“Lisa, if you don’t like your job, you don’t strike: you just go in every day and do it really half-assed. That’s the American way.”

Everything I need to know about the corporate world I learned from the Simpsons and Dilbert.

[Quercus]

@t-bonham@scc.net

@Mean_Mr.Mustard

The one I remember with the most hatred happened maybe ten years ago.

At the beginning of the all-day session, the 30 (or so) of us were arranged in rows. We were not told why. Then, the music started. We had to dance the God-damned Macarena for around ten minutes.

I was once forced into a similar ‘team dancing’ event, with happy salesman type trying to lead a bunch of nerdy computer programmers. But it ended suddenly.

As the leader was cajoling us to get up and dance, one guy in the front said loudly “No, I refuse. This is insulting and discriminatory to my friend Bob, who’s there in his wheelchair and CAN’T dance. So I won’t either.” Another person said “That’s right – Bob’s a friend of mine, too.” and sat back down. Within 60 seconds all of us were sitting down, defiantly refusing to dance. So the annoying music was turned off, and he apologized, and rather grumpily went on to his next ‘exercise’.

That one started with him asking someone to name their favorite color. After a short silence, Susan, our blind programmer, said “Black. It has to be black, because that’s the only color I ever see.” At which point the leader looked at her for a bit, disconcerted, and then stumbled into some lame statement about how we all have our own personal favorite colors, unique to each of us, just like we each have our own sets of abilities" – meanwhile his assistant was mournfully packing away a box of brightly colored cards. (We never did learn what those colored cards were for.)

I really wanted this post to keep going… like the next activity was going to be a peanut-eating contest (random programmer: “I’m allergic; that would kill me, you know!”), followed by some Christmas-themed thing (Gupta the network guy: “Excuse me?” ), then the poor leader tries to organize a trust-fall (Bob: “What, have you forgotten about me already?”), and so on.

[Boyo_Jim]

And then the trainer says, “Even a guy in a wheelchair can fall”, and dumps him out of the chair.

[Fenris]

@aruvqan

All I actually want from a job is to be properly trained, then left the fuck alone to actually do my damned job. I do not need any warm fuzzies, just actual monetary bonuses now and again.

Quoted for truth.