Dear boss, please take your team building activities and shove them where the sun doesn’t shine. No one wanted to attend the entire day session you already planned and we certainly don’t want to attend a 4 hour follow up. We all, for the most part, get along well… there are no major issues I am aware of to warrant this colossal waste of time. I don’t want to play games with my co workers, I don’t want to complete any personality tests and I sure as hell don’t give a shit what the results of said tests and activities are, so please do me a favor and stop planning shit like this. Thanks, appreciate it. —I Heart The Coast
This article appears in Jul 7-13, 2011.
Agreed…Just let us do our jobs that we get paid for. If we all get along and are working well why screw with that.
If I want to improve myself more I will take myself back to school.
With that sense of sublimely ironic timing that corporate middle management have made into an art form, don’t be surpised when the “Team Building Exercises” are shortly followed by mass downsizing. Update your resume and good luck.
What’s even worse is “sensitivity training”. (Not that I have any sort of personal experience, mind you.)
Is this on your time OB? No? Didn’t think so.
Getting paid to attend? Yes? Thought so.
I agree with Ivan, “Update your resume and good luck”, but for a slightly different reason…I bet that your ‘willingness to participate’ has been noted.
Aren’t you the perfect employee! Bitching because you had to do something at the behest of the company, with pay received from the company, and on company time.
Re: “… there are no major issues I am aware of”: Perhaps you are not aware of any issues because it is not your responsibility to be aware of such issues, as is the case with management? Perhaps there are issues of which you know nothing? I’d suggest there are issues, like poor employee morale, for example. Maybe a dickwad , know-it-all employee with piss-poor attitude lowering workplace morale?
I’m sure your cheery demeanour is noted by your employers. A proactive recommendation would be to get your resume in order, but you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, of course.
Was this a Rupert Murdoch, News of the World, we value your input affair?
This bitch is just another example why it sucks to be middle management: stuck between the unreceptive worker bees and the sometimes equally unreceptive upper management.
lol don’t let these assholes get to you OB. Jeeze, it’s a bitch board, people. Like anyone enjoys the team building bullshit.
If an employer has any issues with the work being done etc.. they should addess that employee not make the hole office go on a what the people actually doing a good job see as a waste of time. If someone isn’t a team player or what ever the case may be.
Not everyone wants to be buddy buddy with the people they work with.
Really it is just managements way of trying to look good to their bosses. All a freakin game
To me, team building is overrated. Some company probably sold your company this activity using statistics pulled from the prestigious Anal Cavity Institute that impressed your bosses. Hey, everyone loves numbers.
That said, if you’re getting paid to do it, just roll with it. If this requires you to play Jumping to Conclusions on a Saturday and a Sunday, then I’d threaten to burn the place down. Of course none will take you seriously.
most team building seminars only have i in it. as in me, fuck the rest of you mentality. it just keeps on going, forever, and nothing very useful comes from them.
“Some company probably sold your company this activity using statistics pulled from the prestigious Anal Cavity Institute that impressed your bosses. Hey, everyone loves numbers”
SO true.
That’s the only language management and HR speak.
you’re only able to change things if/when the figures warrant it.
Be thankful if your organization hasn’t fallen into the grip of the Six Sigma cult.
Six Sigma is another flawed and failed management tool that companies still buy into (literally!) in the hope that their organizations will realize efficiency gains and cost reductions, among other good things.
It’s been said of the Six Sigma process that when your only tool is a hammer, every problem gets redefined as a nail, with the predictable negative result.
The NYSE and TSX are littered with the remains of corporations who drank the Six Sigma kool-aid and never looked back.
LOL……total waste of time OP. Your boss needs to ‘look’ like he/she is improving the subordinates so they can get that sweet bonus on their salary.