There is, however, a ‘Y’ in ‘Teambuilding Day’. Or, to be strictly accurate, a ‘Why?’ As in ‘Why am I maiming an innocent tomato and making glove puppets?’
A week ago this very day, I was partaking in that most peculiar of events - a Teambuilding Day.
Whilst there are definitely people who find this kind of thing an uplifting, exciting, opportunity to bond with people in the organisation they barely know, chat happily to strangers, or come together to achieve a mutually satisfying goal, thus subtly demonstrating the power of a team, there are also people who find them truly baffling, awkward, depressing, and the sort of thing that leaves you thinking ‘I could probably have cleared the 170 emails in my InBox by now’. Or played 92 games of Solitaire. Or scanned my bottom on the photocopier and emailed it to people of a nervous disposition, just to see what would happen.
After spending an hour trying to make a tomato zoom down a zip wire, detach itself, and land within a target on the ground (without human intervention) with a colleague, we discovered that, despite coming devilishly close to achieving our goal, we had instead successfully terminated our tom to such an extent that it could more accurately have been described as puree.
Returning to our temporary team of people we don’t usually work with, to do roles we don’t usually do, my poorly back and pasty disposition meant I was put in the group preparing a presentation. Through the medium of video! With glove puppets! Worryingly, I was given the task of creating a sheep. Even more worryingly, I quickly came up with Mr. Herdwick, who came to life through a colleague’s sock, some fuzzy-felt, sellotape and bits of paper, in a display of art & craft so dazzling, I’m expecting a call to front Blue Peter at any moment.
Writing a selection of terrible puns involving the word ‘baaaa’, Mr. Herdwick was interviewed, and the video later played to the rest of the organisation, whilst I cowered in a corner, and hoped that the daft voice Mr. H had put on would disguise my identity, and save my tattered career. I’ve yet to fully understand where he got the weird Yorkshire accent from; perhaps it’s best if I don’t think about that too much.
Other presentations saw our head of HR singing to a startled audience, and my boss (white male, 40’s) attempting a kind of rap/dance that will haunt the dreams of anyone who saw it, and may well be illegal in some way.
So – what have we learnt from our day? Well, it was certainly entertaining, some people definitely had a good time, relationships between disparate departments and offices have (mostly) improved, it’s best to stand on one of the cross struts when trying to climb over a fence with barbed wire on top, and Mr. Herdwick badly needs a wash. And some new jokes.
This article first appeared in my 'Thank grumpy it's Friday' column in the North West Evening Mail on Friday, 8th March 2013, where it was retitled "Made sheepish by teambuilding", which is actually pretty darn clever. You can read the version edited by the paper here. It received a minor drop in work count, and a couple of minor tweaks ('Fuzzy felt' was replaced with 'felt pieces' and 'Sellotape' with 'sticky tape'.)
I did submit the picture of Mr Herdwick, but I suspect that, had they used it, the word count would have dropped a fair bit more - I don't actually get to see a copy of the paper until Monday or Tuesday, as it's posted out to me.
Mr Herdwick, having become my @grumpyf1 twitter profile picture for a while (and tweeting on my behalf in a vaguely threatening way), has subsequently been invited to my honorary niece's birthday party, as long as he doesn't wear a mankini. I. Know.
Unfortunately, my colleague wanted his sock back yesterday (I'm surprised it took a week), so Mr Herdwick was sadly dismembered, after living on the back of my chair. I've kept his appendages though, so he may rise again. Worryingly, I noticed a striking similarity to Red Dwarf's Arnold Rimmer and Mr Flibble...
Lovely comment on the column on the NWEM website, from someone called Sharon: "Peter, this made me laugh! Since my company frequently coerces people to do similarly crazy things, I appreciated your insights. I'm still not sure if you liked it or if you didn't, but sounds like at least you laughed. And in my opinion, that doesn't happen enough at work so anything that spurs it is great by me. I am curious though - what would your suggestion for a good 'teambuilding' happening be?" I've replied saying anything involving cake and cappuccinos. Preferably in a coffee shop.
What's that, Mr Herdwick? Kill them all...?
(Laid-back guitarage today from Chris Rea's "Blue Street (Five Guitars)" album. Smooooooth.)
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