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An urbanites worst nightmare - the corporate team bonding away day

Toughen up and stop whining. These things can be a hoot if you can gather like minded forces and gently disrupt proceedings...
 
Its great when the office all get out in the open air. we went rope climbing not so long ago and it was a great tonic to see the snooty secratary stuck up a rope and scraming to be let down immediately..

All the bonding was done watching her, so many peeps that day got their retribution!!!!!
 
"Look, I'm walking through fire for the company!"

Maybe a couple of months recovering from foot burns will help those people sort their priorities out...:D
 
I've found two very different ways of approaching this kind of thing:

A Find out who in the company is ex-services, and be on their team.
They'll get you through, possibly because they've done all this kind of stuff on their leadership courses. :cool:

OR

B On the coach to the venue, befriend that nice-but-dim lass from "Human Resources", the one with the false nails and hair extensions.
If you stick close to her for the day you can't help but look good at any practical/phsyical activity they throw at you! :D
 
Hey guys

Thanks for the useful information.

Luckily we have someone who is an ex-para on the staff, so I will be aligning myself with him. We get on quite well anyway :)

I will be putting on a brave and corporately compliant face, as advised, whilst secretly being devious and cunning.

I suspect keen marketing guy will be trying to get on the same team as the group CEO to score points so that will be fun to watch if nothing else.

One downside is that a colleague that I really get on with (she's really fun and interesting) told me on Wednesay that she's been diagnosed with lymphoma :(
 
ex para team building oh dear :D
enjoy it can't be as insane as the one I ran into once.
exercise had been to build a pow camp that done sent out patrols to find prisoners (there weren't supposed to be any)
out of the rain came four blokes in combat gear
quick snap ambush marched back to pow camp to be processed as POWs
went out on patrol again similar result the several other patrols and been capturing groups of bedraggled people in combat gear who didn't put up much resistance.
they were mostly on there last legs boderline hypothermia cases no proper kit and no clue what they were about.
turns out they were on some hyper macho team building event run by some deranged ex guards officer.
hilarious argument ensured when tosser turned up in range rover closely followed by mountain rescue (intent on violence) and most of the victims who
after tea and soup were generally in a mutinous mood though quite happy as prisoners of war.
tosser wanted to continue with exercise demanded his people were given back to him or mod would be charged with kipnap!!!!
prisoners refused to move although one did offer a large sum of cash for a rifle and bullets
Mountain rescue bloke threatned to bury an ice axe in the tossers head if he tried taking anyone else out on the hill
one of the earstwhile prisoner went off with mountain rescue to hire a coach
and they all went back to london :D
 
Ok, tomorrow is the big day. The coach is leaving at 7am prompt, fortunately about 5minutes away from where I live.

I have two large packets of sweets to keep my team mates happy.

I am not the most negative person on the team - I'm more or less resigned to my fate for the day - so I could come out of this looking quite good.

The results of the day will be posted on Wednesday night, when I next have computer access.
 
I get this once a year. They do fly us all out to New York (head office) for it tho. the business class flight is brilliant. its all down hill from there tho.

it lasts a week. every waking moment spent with brown nose fucking septic colleagues. this year the highlight was a bingo night. seriously.

every year i come back thinking of joining al-qaeda. think yourself lucky its only one day young lady.
 
Ignore keicar, I know I am :D

Got up at 6.30am. Went to coach pick-up point. Grunted good morning at colleagues. Left at 7am. Fell asleep on the bus. Arrived at venue (back arse of nowhere, at least 8 miles to nearest station) at 9.30.

Nothing happened until 11.30 when we had the option of doing some indoor team bonding puzzle type things, or going for a walk. Two thirds of the attendees opt to go for a walk round the site. This intensely annoyed everyone from my site, as we could have had a lie-in.

We spent the next 2 hours doing a selection of outdoor team puzzle things to earn 'money' to buy art materials so we could make a picture of our corporate vision. Mostly with gritted teeth, and none were that difficult.

Lunch was a few sandwiches and some nibbly bits, which lasted about 5 minutes with 70 disgruntled employees. We spent the rest of the afternoon doing some more fun things, like shooting things (archery & laser clay pigeons), and then got turned into 5 year olds to paint and cut and stick jigsaw pieces to make the corporate mission statement 'big picture'. It got stuck together and looked shit :D

Then there was supposed to be a BBQ, but the chef dropped a whole load of food so it got delayed. At this point, a load of us legged it to the hotel for a much needed escape and a proper meal.

The sweets I took made me very popular with the rest of my team (thanks for the tip!) and despite keeping a lid on my negativity to a certain degree, I didn't speak to another person all day who was pleased to be on the away day.

Plus, we reckon it's cost the company 14 man weeks in lost time and about £75,000 in cash.

Bargain.
 
I reckon that there are two (more if I think any up as I'm writing this) golden rules for corporate team building activities.

1. Don't, whatever you do, call it a "team building ....". It makes it sound like team members aren't capable of being a team without management interference.

2. Rule 1 is IMPORTANT. Read it again.

3. For the sake of all that is holy, MAKE SURE IT'S WELL ORGANISED. If the day goes off at half cock, the only "team building" you can hope to achieve is to unite them in their derision of your numpty managerial skills.

4. Unless that's the intention.

5. Expect the managers to get wet/up to their necks/seriously hazed. They're part of the team, aren't they? And when you're building things, sometimes there are extra bits sticking out that need sawing off to fit. That's what happens to managers on team building days.

6. Did I mention about not calling it "team building".

There, SIX golden rules.

I reckon that 2/3 of this kind of event that I hear about goes horribly wrong, or is a complete flop.

The place I am doing my clinical placement has "team building events". They call them "awaydays", even though they largely take place on weekends. They're non-mandatory, involve the staff and families, are generally based around camping, and are organised by the staff. Last year we went sailing; this year we were supposed to be entering a raft race on the Towy, but the weather was so appalling that we cancelled our weekend, and the raft race was cancelled shortly afterwards. Next year maybe. Oh, and there's quite a lot of quaffing, barbeques, and sitting round campfires playing stupid games that involve lots of people standing up and turning around and getting bits of burnt cork on their faces, if I remember correctly (I was quite drunk by this time). Nothing like a bunch of psychotherapists, psychiatrists and the occasional trainee doctor making fools of themselves...

All this would be hell if it were mandatory, organised by managers, and put on by some kind of Corporate Team-Building Consultancy. Because it's not, it's fun, you don't HAVE to make a pillock of yourself (but it helps), and turnout is typically over 90%.
 
Thankfully my boss would never sanction one of these, as it would mean lost time = lost profit. :D
 
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