Corporate "AWAY DAYS" aaaggghhhh

MissAdventure

Ooh no!
I had the sort of mum who said "Be careful!" and "You'll have someone's eye out!" and I'm afraid it has stayed with me.
Rik Mayall died after his quad bike accident.
He wouldn't have done if he'd had my mum.

Rick Mayall had his quad bike accident in 1998 and died from a heart attack in 2014. He did claim in his spoof autobiography in 2005 that he rose from the dead.

Thank goodness I have never had to endure any of this nonsense.
When we had a new, modern, young Head, we all wondered what she would dream up.
The first thing she provided was decent soft toilet paper in the staff loos.
The second thing was free school meals( and they were good ones). Her reasoning was that we all worked hard, leading many groups during the lunch hour or after school, and needed a proper meal.
The third thing was to change the end of term Christmas lunch where we all contributed to a buffet to one provided and paid for by her personally.
She was also extremely kind and understanding if any staff had family problems eg bereavement.
Beats any of the other so- called team building nonsense.

MissAdventure

I hate all that team building stuff, and my last proper job was very much into it.
Role play, making paper hats for eachother, and afternoon of drumming.
You name it, we did it.

Ours were much more fun.
Except for the brainstorming sessions and no-one took any notice of the results anyway.

After a recent (at the time) reorganisation, our division head decided to organise an Away 2 days for his team leaders to get to know each other as the work of the different teams did not really overlap.

I cannot remember what we did, it was all conference room based, no outdoor activities. What I do remember is that I came back from the course with the strong conviction that if I ever saw any of them in the street, I would cross the road, or hide behind a car, anything rather than have to socialise with such boring people ever again. We had absolutely nothing in common.

Corporate team building, renovating a nursery garden (blagging materials from local shops). Hotel weekends negotiating outdoor challenges in the dark, ‘trusting’ colleagues whilst blindfold, design targets with loo rolls, string and paper clips. Supposed to sort out leaders for management roles, Belbin’s team roles much in evidence.
Yes, I remember them, predatory males (lock your bedroom door), lots of alcohol, laughs and for some mega embarrassment. Makes me shudder now.

I did not mind the basic "away days" organised by the uni where we went to some out of town venue and did business games, role play and the like. There was always organized transport (I dont drive) and a good lunch.

It was when things got more physical that the fun began.

One poster mentioned falling backwards into the arms of a colleague. As someone with a disability I would never risk doing this and said so. Its supposed to be an exercise built in trust. However people do not get trust from me. They earn it over many years.

I pointed out to the facilitator that if I hurt myself I had no domestic support whatever and would probably end up having to sue the uni for half a million. End of conversation.

On these occasions I find that if there is just one person who declines to do something on the grounds that its demeaning (or whatever) others will also refuse. Like the woman who refused to sit on the floor. It just takes one person to say NO.

Ours was great fun and we all enjoyed it very much but it wasn't necessary or a good use of NHS funds

The do succeed in their mission to Bond the Team

Absolutely everyone is united in hating every single minute of the bloody thing;
are as one in their sheer loathing of the ‘facilitator’;
and everyone can’t wait to get the damn thing over with and f* off down the pub and / or go home

Wasn't! I'm getting on my own wick with all these wrong words.

At one of ours, we had to introduce ourselves and say what our favourite film was.
I said I didnt have a favourite film, as I'm not that interested in them.

The trainer was very put out and insisted I must have a favourite film, but I really don't, because they don't interest me much, and I want going to pretend for the sake of fitting in.

I’ve done loads of these over the years and generally enjoyed them except maybe the one where we had been up drinking until 3 in the morning and were up abseiling at 9! Never took to that activity. Or the raft building one where because I was the lightest, youngest and female I was the one who had to row the raft first. Or the one where we had to do crafts whilst telling a complete stranger something personal about ourselves.
Maybe with hindsight I didn’t enjoy them!

Quite a few as a teacher. Always led by someone who hadn't a clue who they were dealing with and a college who insisted on wearing stilettos.
Team building, falling backwards into the arms of a colleague who you knew did not like you and would drop you. Going around the table announcing your name school and what your hopes and ambitions were. I was once so worked up that when the person in the seat next to me announced her name and it was the same as my aunt's maiden name, I gave my maiden name and was accused of doing it on purpose. I was the black sheep for the rest of the course as the place erupted they all thought I had done it on purpose. On another, a chap announced when asked his aspirations he wanted to own a tea shop and get away from all this c....
Getting from one island [PEmat] to another in shark-infested waters, I just walked and sat down when asked why I said the tide had gone out.
Writing group rhymes on an educational theme, always good for a laugh and a dig at the incompetence of the Head and the leader being told how good another school was at this as if we cared?
As in eazybees post a complete waste of Educational authorities' money.

We had two bonding training days in a local hotel when we moved from an old school to a new 'purpose-built' open plan one. As a staff we had worked together for several years, and would have much preferred to have spent the time in school unpacking and organising; instead of which we had to play silly games, team-building, preparing mission statements and being told to 'flop on the floor with the kids; I do' by a middle-aged woman who didn't care she was displaying her knickers for all to see. The head threw things we hadn't done properly, according to him, back in our faces for months to come, despite the education advisors who conducted the course telling him he had a good staff who were able to work independently. He felt threatened.
Such a waste of the Education budget.

Ooh no!
I had the sort of mum who said "Be careful!" and "You'll have someone's eye out!" and I'm afraid it has stayed with me.
Rik Mayall died after his quad bike accident.
He wouldn't have done if he'd had my mum.

I remember one where we went paintballing, which was actually pretty good fun. In the final game, I was taking cover behind a tree, then leaped out and 'shot' one of the men, who got such a fright that he tripped over a tree root and ended up with a broken ankle. Oops...

We had an NHS one for our centre staff. It was great fun but not really necessary as we all got on very well anyway. On one task I just carried out the activity while the others were chatting about it and I got into trouble for not being a team player. Another team had a massive argument after one senior member called another a f******ng s*** (actually a far more offensive word) because he'd thrown a beer crate too far for the plank to reach it! It was hilarious and we all had a great and totally pointless weekend.

I agree with you MisAdventure and Witzend. If anyone preferred not to come to ours they could opt out, without any fuss. They usually all came as there was good nosh too!

MissAdventure

I think I'd be doing big brown ones if someone tried to get me in a canoe or on a quad bike.

But mine was some time ago. Were you not more intrepid back then MissAdventure?
I’d try everything again except quad bikes, oh and I’d need help to get out of the canoe now.

Oh how I hated this rubbish..... so contrived and so monumentally pointless.

I remember one where we were all sitting in a circle to do a relaxation exercise - the facilitator for this was American, and rattled on about relaxing each bit of you, as in "Concentrate on your neck, concentrate on your shoulders - in his US drawl. Then he got to "concentrate on your genital" and I had a sudden vision of all these little genitals popping up round the circle (the men that is) and nearly bust a gut trying not to giggle.....childish, moi?

I did several but one 2 day course sticks in my mind that was so emotionally exhausting.
We were all senior Professional front line NHS management teams who have to handle difficult issues.
Senior clinical staff like myself and young Doctors who's next job will be Consultants.

Professional actors played out parts, all sorts of emotive scenario's, with us in different mixed teams.

The Doctors really struggled, myself and my colleague helped them as we had much more experience. However in the final individual assessment, the assessors had noted we supported them, they pulled our action apart to the extent I ended up in tears. It wasn't a bad way just over honest their objective was our mental health should be protected. We look after our team who looks after us?
We need to think about self preservation.

No tree hugging this time, left there completely knackered.

I think I'd be doing big brown ones if someone tried to get me in a canoe or on a quad bike.

TillyTrotter

We had them every 4 months. It was a private company and the Boss believed they brought everyone together to have some fun. I organised them.
We had go-karting, shooting, paint balling, quad biking, ten pin bowling, archery, and Zorbing that I can remember.
Most people mentioned they enjoyed them, and everything was paid for by the company.
A photo gallery was compiled after each one and circulated - that was fun too.
It was a happy company to work for.

IMO such events that are actually intended to be fun are one thing.

The sort of Bear Grylls thing dh did, where people are supposed to force themselves to do things they would never choose to do, or that they actively dread or are afraid of, is surely a rather different matter.
(Dh said he didn’t mind any of it, but then he’d never in a million years have admitted that he was secretly sh*tting little blue lights, as my father so quaintly used to put it.)

It sounds dangerous!

Only ever done one. After the obligatory introduction exercises, it involved
team canoeing (thank heavens for painkillers later),
archery (not my forté),
skeet shooting (better),
riding quad bikes (stay well back to avoid the mud chucked up by the racers),
driving go-karts where the steering had been reversed (crazy but good fun),
and playing netball driving a mini-digger (for which I discovered a hidden talent that I’ve never been able to use since).
I’m not sure what it was supposed to achieve, but it was well worth giving up a weekend.

Preferred.