Pointless company "team building" days

Badger · Mar 6, 2013

I'm sure some people on here have been subjected to this sort of thing, what is the worst you have been forced to attend?

This is the "fun and japes" our company will be having tomorrow:

"The first team briefing of 2013 takes place on Thursday 7 March, with the focus firmly on fun, team-building and creativity! Does anyone watch The Great British Bake Off or The Apprentice? Well, here is your chance to show off your own creative and competitive skills to your colleagues - at the Chocolate Truffle 'Apprentice' Challenge!

You will be in teams of 7/8. Each team is given the challenge of making a chocolate product for a specific market. The exercise will involve:

· Race against the clock as teams learn how to make handmade chocolates, identify a market niche, design the packaging and work together to create the final product.
· Presentation skills are put to the test as teams showcase the product, packaging and sales pitch to our judging panel. Watch out as there will be special guest appearances from Alan Sugar and Dragon Den’s Peter Jones and Duncan Bannatyne.
· Wigs, feather boas and other such sophisticated props are available to bring a little finesse to the proceedings. Hilarity is pretty much guaranteed..
· Chocolatey prizes will be awarded to the winning team. Marks are given for innovation, cooperation and general genius.
· Rest assured this challenge does include bowls of melted chocolate, handmade chocolate centres, delicious toppings and decorations!"

I CANNOT wait.

sten_super · Mar 6, 2013

I work for an SME, so ours tend to be more company-strategy focussed (i.e. breakout groups discussing a particular issue and then coming back and presenting our findings to the whole). I agree they are a waste of time, although that can either be a good or a bad thing depending upon workload at the time. Three years ago we hit absolute rock bottom; a complete waste of time day that achieved precisely nothing, after which (about 3pm) rather than heading to the pub (as standard after one of these) half-a-dozen of us had to head back to the office and do pretty much our full working day (finishing about 9pm) because we had so much on.

Titus · Mar 6, 2013

We had one this year. It was on a Saturday and we were all told we had to attend but no overtime would be paid.

daveinprague · Mar 6, 2013

The worst was just before xmas...they made us go to some dorp on the border called Mikiluv, or some such place... 5 to a room in some farm dorm... arrived friday at around 21:30.....I was on the 10:30 train back to Prague on the Saturday morning.....im just not a country person.

Best, I convinced boss that rather than wasting the budget on piddling trips, why not do one good one a year...suggested Amsterdam, and he went for it!!!...

Mellotron · Mar 6, 2013

Badger said:
I'm sure some people on here have been subjected to this sort of thing, what is the worst you have been forced to attend?

This is the "fun and japes" our company will be having tomorrow:

"The first team briefing of 2013 takes place on Thursday 7 March, with the focus firmly on fun, team-building and creativity! Does anyone watch The Great British Bake Off or The Apprentice? Well, here is your chance to show off your own creative and competitive skills to your colleagues - at the Chocolate Truffle 'Apprentice' Challenge!

You will be in teams of 7/8. Each team is given the challenge of making a chocolate product for a specific market. The exercise will involve:

· Race against the clock as teams learn how to make handmade chocolates, identify a market niche, design the packaging and work together to create the final product.
· Presentation skills are put to the test as teams showcase the product, packaging and sales pitch to our judging panel. Watch out as there will be special guest appearances from Alan Sugar and Dragon Den’s Peter Jones and Duncan Bannatyne.
· Wigs, feather boas and other such sophisticated props are available to bring a little finesse to the proceedings. Hilarity is pretty much guaranteed..
· Chocolatey prizes will be awarded to the winning team. Marks are given for innovation, cooperation and general genius.
· Rest assured this challenge does include bowls of melted chocolate, handmade chocolate centres, delicious toppings and decorations!"

I CANNOT wait.

Sounds SO MUCH like this is by fat women, for fat women.

TheFatBallBoy · Mar 6, 2013

Pointless company "team building" days

Had a team building day as a care worker but the fatal mistake was going for a drink afterwards one of the guys beat another guy to shit after a night on the lash, neither returned to work :facepalm:

We needed to rebuild our team after that.

Algernon · Mar 6, 2013

It amazes me how different Companies fall for this expensive American crap . Costs them a fortune and any dubious benefits are pretty much forgotten never to be of any use in the future. I've been on a few where they taught us to juggle three balls, punch th;rough a piece of wood with the palm of our hands and walk onto an arrow placed on your throat causing the arrow to snap. I can see what they were trying to do but from my viewpoint the only people who got anything out of it were the consultants and the company who could say they were "investing in people"

Billy in Bristol · Mar 6, 2013

I am currently delivering lots of Olympic Athlete created Team Building Exercises, and the original posting is unfortunately the norm.

We seem to be booked by sports lovers who want to play alongside medallists and Olympians and shunned by female HR people who want to bake effin cakes!

Enjoy the 7th and think you and your mates could have been doing something original.

Racek · Mar 6, 2013

I had one last summer. Turned up at my bosses house and we had to help landscape his garden. Said that it was team building and we could have a BBQ at the end.

Billy the Fish · Mar 6, 2013

Badger said:
I'm sure some people on here have been subjected to this sort of thing, what is the worst you have been forced to attend?

This is the "fun and japes" our company will be having tomorrow:

"The first team briefing of 2013 takes place on Thursday 7 March, with the focus firmly on fun, team-building and creativity! Does anyone watch The Great British Bake Off or The Apprentice? Well, here is your chance to show off your own creative and competitive skills to your colleagues - at the Chocolate Truffle 'Apprentice' Challenge!

You will be in teams of 7/8. Each team is given the challenge of making a chocolate product for a specific market. The exercise will involve:

· Race against the clock as teams learn how to make handmade chocolates, identify a market niche, design the packaging and work together to create the final product.
· Presentation skills are put to the test as teams showcase the product, packaging and sales pitch to our judging panel. Watch out as there will be special guest appearances from Alan Sugar and Dragon Den’s Peter Jones and Duncan Bannatyne.
· Wigs, feather boas and other such sophisticated props are available to bring a little finesse to the proceedings. Hilarity is pretty much guaranteed..
· Chocolatey prizes will be awarded to the winning team. Marks are given for innovation, cooperation and general genius.
· Rest assured this challenge does include bowls of melted chocolate, handmade chocolate centres, delicious toppings and decorations!"

I CANNOT wait.

The worst thing is that there's probably a team of marketing/HR type bints being paid shit loads of money to spend months coming up with and organising this bollocks.

What does your company do out of interest?

Badger · Mar 6, 2013

Mellotron said:
Sounds SO MUCH like this is by fat women, for fat women.

It was organised by a woman who has just had a baby....

Badger · Mar 6, 2013

Billy the Fish said:
The worst thing is that there's probably a team of marketing/HR type bints being paid shit loads of money to spend months coming up with and organising this bollocks.

What does your company do out of interest?

We are a fairly small (50 odd staff) software development company creating tools for the MoD. As you can probably imagine the majority of people (including myself) are technical who are all of the same opinion on the value of something like this, of course we never get any input on the activities we do. It's funny how they have the money to spend on something like this but I haven't seen one training course offered to any of the technical staff.

KZNSeagull · Mar 6, 2013

I am self employed, therefore my team building exercises involve taking myself off to the golf course!

There was a famous course years ago that was all to do with personal development at the organisation I used to work at - essentially all it did was get people to realise that their lives were crap, so a rather large proportion of the attendees either resigned or left their respective partners!!

Tricky Dicky · Mar 6, 2013

I'm sure team-building is generally a good thing, but it should happen naturally, not be forced upon.

y2dave · Mar 6, 2013

Our US colleagues recently hired a cocktail maker who demonstrated how to make a particularly complicated cocktail and then challenged us to replicate it. He gave each team a cocktail he had prepared earlier as a guide and a bunch of spirits and shots as ingredients.

I simply returned his cocktail to him as our effort which allowed us to down the booze provided, beat the suckers who took it seriously and escape quickly from this organised fun. :wanker:

The aloof gatekeeper · Mar 6, 2013

I feel for you, OP; it sounds bloody awful. Still, look on the bright side; you might have had to do something involving roleplay *shudders*. Why can't they take you ten-pin bowling, or something?

Remember this training day?

BLOCK F · Mar 6, 2013

Algernon said:
It amazes me how different Companies fall for this expensive American crap . Costs them a fortune and any dubious benefits are pretty much forgotten never to be of any use in the future. I've been on a few where they taught us to juggle three balls, punch th;rough a piece of wood with the palm of our hands and walk onto an arrow placed on your throat causing the arrow to snap. I can see what they were trying to do but from my viewpoint the only people who got anything out of it were the consultants and the company who could say they were "investing in people"

Have to agree with this 100%.
Have been retired for several years now, but in one of my former jobs we were subjected to these waste of time days every now and then.Most of it was complete shit and just something to be endured before going back to normal life!

Badger · Mar 6, 2013

The aloof gatekeeper said:
I feel for you, OP; it sounds bloody awful. Still, look on the bright side; you might have had to do something involving roleplay *shudders*. Why can't they take you ten-pin bowling, or something?

Oh god roleplay is HORRIBLE, if that is even rumoured I will be taking a sickie.

The only silver lining is that the "team building" is followed by a company social. I am on the work social committee and made sure this social was simply a trip to the pub with some drinks and food thrown in.

hitony · Mar 6, 2013

I have been on many of them over the years, don't personally rate them but the worst one I went on was a 2 day thing where we ended up in 2 groups of 5 and had to write a song and then sing it to everyone the following day, well I can play guitar, but I most certainly can not sing!!! and sadly neither could any of the others in my group, we went up first and were to say the least totally woefull! shocking and sad and that was just the singing, the written song was just as bad (it was on the theme of the course which was management of people etc)

The other group laughed and jeered us and we felt pretty low and silly to say the least, but we all said, well its their turn next and we can have our moment of joy mocking them.......that moment never came, one girl in the group was a semi pro singer and song writer, she was fantastic, we all stood there while she sang and it was amazing (the other 4 in her group just did a bit of backing which it was clear she had organised) we could not say a word, we all felt like crap and stupid! I think if both groups had been as bad / good as each other it may well have been a bit of fun, but with one group being extremely good and us being total rubbish, it clearly did not work.

Role play is great if you are anything like an actor but I have no time for it within the work place, in my opinion it is far from one of the best ideas that have come across the pond. But I'm sure it works for some people.

narly101 · Mar 6, 2013

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