Forced "fun" in the workplace
Comments
-
Insofar as Paddy is a real person of course.
1 -
-
Sounds horrifying.
Be a simple no from me.
Don't make up any excuses. Just nope.
3 -
On the "forced fun" topic, I personally can take or leave the work night out, as I'm quite introverted.
Started a new job a few years ago, because of Covid, there were no big work nights out.
This year I found the team were all mad keen to have a night out. As their manager, I couldn't really just decide not to show up. We all had a great night, it didn't feel like anyone was forcing anyone to have fun.
I suppose it just worked for us this year, next year could be an omnishambles!
0 -
They had a casual Friday, every Friday, was organized by a non management employee… then they decided that we should for the privilege of not wearing a uniform, put a fiver into a box every Friday…. And donate it to a charity. She was beaming smiling while mentioning this thinking it could be the catalyst to solving world hunger or some crap.
” Hannah, we are present in work for maybe 50 or so Fridays on average per year… so you are demanding that each employee hands over 250 euros for the privilege of wearing their own clothes ? “
5 -
Advertisement
-
Nights out with no purpose other than socialising aren't what I mean though. They're usually good fun.
0 -
We used to have great craic going to the pub after work on Fridays and staying till late. Wasn't organised. And was a mixture of everyone.
Then the company was taken over by a larger company and someone was hired to "make fun", and it felt like being in playschool. Needless to say it wasn't fun. But they got their pound of LinkedIn posts from it. #Fun, #Recruitment, #Zzz
10 -
Jaysis thats one mighty chip you have on your shoulder there. sad b*stard.
of course no professional rugby player earned what they have. and there isn't a few thousand rugby players male and female in Ireland who never wanted to or could play professionally.
whats ironic is you don't realise rugby in Ireland is actually like athletics and boxing. All Island and was fiercely amateur for decades.
you really are an idiot
6 -
No Meltown. Sure im in my 40s. Wouldnt know how to have a meltdown over trivial things. :) We werent taught that in school.
0 -
Cant believe you actually had to make this post. Goes to show how many people just cant engage their brains to be fair :)
2 -
Advertisement
-
We had someone start that crap "Fiver for casual Friday" they called it. Well we all decided to go straight down to her desk every Friday with our sponsor card from our kids from schools, gaa, hospital tickets you get in the post to sell etc. And would make a big point of telling her that if she can ask everyone in the company for a fiver, surely she can give a fiver for our kids good causes. A few weeks after we started that an email came around "There will be no more collecting of money in the workplace". The boss told me after that she had gone in and complained that everyone was asking her for money all the time :)
10 -
I used to work for a very large company that would have quite a few organized social things throughout the year.
Nothing forced, all optional. I enjoyed the Dragon Boats. That was a good experience. Some of the other stuff I signed up for just because it was during work hours. The Plane pull was one. It sounds fun and interesting but was lots of standing around and the actual pull was pretty pointless. Still, I think it was for a good cause.
The xmas parties were decent fun, but yeah, you can't be getting to pished.
0 -
Holding tyrants to the fireJoin Date:Posts: 1884
If those few thousand rugby players had been fortunate enough to be have been born in wealthy families and sent to the most exclusive schools in the country their odds of playing the professional game would have increased exponentially.
The cream of the Irish rugby playing crop comes from such a small pool that it wouldn’t surprise me if the majority of them knew each other since they were twelve years of age. It’s all about which schools they went to, and the best players from those schools. This is in a sport that’s played seriously in about ten countries, and the primary sport in maybe one country that I’m aware of (New Zealand).
Compare that with properly meritocratic sports such as boxing and athletics where virtually every village in the country has a club (or small town at least). They are serious sports drawn from a huge talent pool in almost every country around the world, and yet you’ll never see the pundits of RTE lowering themselves to cover such common pursuits. Those talent pool comparisons don’t even include soccer, the most popular sport in the world.
For me, all things considered, it’s more impressive that someone played for the U15 Irish soccer team than any professional rugby team, including the Ireland rugby team.
In sports terms the Ireland rugby team and the “stars” of Leinster and Munster are giant bloated fish in piss-soaked puddles, and I find it offensive that the privileged poshos of the RTE Sports Department dedicate so much time to sucking them off tbh.
That’s all I’ll say on that matter in here. If someone would like to continue this line of thought feel free to start a different thread.
0 -
I like the Christmas party. Bite to eat, then off to a pub to throw the credit card behind the bar and drink until you’re full to the brim. Talk a load of shīte, complain about management, and go to a chipper afterwards.
1 -
What happened in our school was that any big lads who showed any sort of athletic ability by 6th class were head hunted by the only private school in the town. My best friend was one of them. After 6th class he went to that school, fees paid, while they rest of us went to the public secondary school. He was playing rugby in his first week in that school and had never played it before. He got quite good at it too.
0 -
nah not letting you away with the excuse of ending that...absolute drivel. and coming from a place of great ignorance. meritocratic sports? wtf are you on about. Rugby players compete against 100s of other rugby players. they don´t just get waved onto the field. Sexton wasn´t picked for Irish schools, and benched for the IRish under 21s. he played over 3 seasons of AIL before getting noticed.
yes RTE never cover boxing or athletics.
is Irish rugby overly reliant on private schools too much...100 per cent. thats the history of the sport and it will take time to fix that. a process that is well underway. Losing league did not help union in any way. in England working class men played League because of the amateur status etc. this has caused huge untold damage to rugby union. one that was never really aknowledged. But luckily in Ireland working class comunities play rugby in places like Thomand RFC etc.
And the idea that every rugby player in Ireland is some priveleged posho is absolute **** nonsense and deeply ignorant. you haven´t a clue. head up to Terenure RFC or St Mary´s (the club non private Templogue kids go to) or over to Barnhall and see if your views hold water.
a sport played in ten countries? so what. its a tough sport, underfunded, under marketed and possibly underpaid at the highest levels. its not a sport you can throw two jumpers down for goalposts (which is why soccer is so universal and loved)
Rugby is the primary sport in South Africa. Its heavily loved in Southern France. over half a million registered players take part in England. it will never compete with soccer. and no rugby player ever thinks it will.
i really admire athletics but it too is a niche sport in Ireland. and yes the cream does rise to the top. There is a rugby club in nearly every large town in Ireland as well. Not bad for the country´s fourth sport.
any person who nakedly hates a sport isn´t a fan of sports. you can dislike it or its form but to have such a hangup shows deep insecurity.
its quite simple why RTE take a passing interest (and its nowhere near as gushing as it was in the Celtic tiger years thank God). Irish rugby is a professional sport competing at the top level of its sport against countries with far greater resources and history. it doesn´t matter if its the tenth sport. if NZ is the best in the world at that sport and we are beating them that is a great sports story. if you can´t understand that, you aren´t a sports fan.
10 -
I work for a US multinational, before the pandemic they used to drag us over to the UK for 2 days of "team building and fun". It was torture.
They would have us on the first flight over that morning, so up at 4am for a full day of company propaganda followed by a 4 course meal and drinks. Next day up at 7am for "Break out sessions", we wouldn't be home until 9pm that night, of course all of this traveling was on your own time.
They stopped it just before the pandemic after a few colleagues ended up in a drunken fist fight and the police had to be called. Thankfully these days we only work the odd day in the office, so between working from home and budget cuts all that extra social nonsense is gone.
4 -
Holding tyrants to the fireJoin Date:Posts: 1884
No offence but your post is a little long winded and rambling but I will comment one small part of it.
Rugby players compete against 100s of other rugby players.Athletes in other major disciplines and sports compete against hundreds of thousands of rivals, as opposed to mere hundreds.
A talented athlete only needs to go to a “good” private school in Dublin and his odds of playing international rugby will increase at least a hundred-fold. No other “major” sports is so heavily favoured towards the privileged few and their offspring.
I wouldn’t even care except that the rugby boys are plastered all over the media despite the fact that their sport is so completely un-meritocratic. This is purely because the denizens of the media class in Ireland went to those same “good” schools and enjoy a bit of rugby themselves.
Earlier this evening I happened to be watching one of those Reeling in the Years style programmes from 2012. The programme gave a thorough breakdown of Ireland’s Six Nations campaign, however the winners of the GAA All-Ireland Championships were only given the briefest mention. The League of Ireland and the FAI Cup weren’t mentioned at all. The coverage was totally skewed in favour of the aforementioned D4 media class and their tastes.
Incidentally Terenure and St Mary’s would certainly be full of toffs, at least according to this firmly working class poster. Though I’m sure someone will be happy to contradict me, citing only being able to afford a two-bedroomed holiday apartment in Portugal to assert their street cred.
0 -
Jesus, chip on shoulder or what.
Life ain't always empty.
6 -
oh get out of it ffs, rambling...
you´re the only one rambling here with your nonsensical bullshit
Elite boxers or sprinters compete with hundreds of thousands of athletes do they? Absolute twaddle. Boxing is such a tough sport very few get to the top. As i said rugby is particularly difficult and dangerous. Its not an easy sport to run, ref or play. its not easily transferable like soccer. and as i said yes private school bs has held it back in the past. there is 4,504,188 registered rugby players across the globe. There is no figure for how many pros. But there is only so many contracts to go around. Ireland has about 100k plus, maybe 150k registered players male and female. there are about 20,000 active professional boxers but again the system lends itself to more availability. i mean engage your brain here. if rugby players were self contractors there would be more of them. Rugby has a long varied history but alot of it is of mismanagement of the sport. Its 2023, and only now are they embracing netflix. France wasn´t admitted to the IRB til 1970. the old conservatives didn´t want to spread the game. absolute idiots.
but yes i´m the one rambling. as i said i can accept that rugby is too indebted to private schools in this country. It´s madness that one school can produce 8-9 pro players for Leinster. but on the flip side if that can be done then it can be done all across the board. in soccer too. we have the athletes. but what holds back rugby is views like yourself. you think its so magically promoted and pumped up by the media class that its still our 4th sport, behind two amateur sports. there is people in this country who are so classist and full of hatred that they outright reject the sport on no real basis. i worked in a warehouse and the refrain was oh rugby thats so gay etc. absolute gay sport. its laughable really. its like cricket. people hate it for no other reason than the British thing. we have some absolute mouth breathers in this country, that have absolutely mush for brains. And in the past, yes elite thick poshos did hold back the game. I go to the odd Leinster game now, i can see the changes. when i went as a kid in DOnnybrook in the 90s it was heaving with suits and lads on the piss and the heino celtic tiger bs. The IRFU aren´t stupid anymore, so they know they have to grow the game. personally i think they are too slow. i live in Ballybough and there is no active engagment around here that i can see. I even wrote to Nial Ring to see if the IRFU could do more and possibly involve the tech companies etc.
You realise Ireland are competing internationally in rugby yet you´ve just compared GAA which is only played on a national level (no truck with it, its our bread and butter) but this just sums up your stupidity. reeling on the years has loads and loads of coverage of GAA. GAA gets incredible coverage in this country. its the national sport. But again if you are talking about elite level sport its a niche sport. Iso it shouldn´t be on your list if we go by your standards. GAA is a social currency, a glue that helps hold the society together in every community in Ireland, North and South. On a sporting level though in your kind of criteria its probably hampered our ability to compete globally. Thousands upon thousands of athletes taken from soccer, athletics, boxing, rugby etc.
Don´t comment on things you have no idea of. Templeogue is a non fee paying school. a fair few of them play in Terenure and Mary´s. i played in both clubs and i can assure you its not full of toffs. go up there, take a session and say that to their face. you wouldn´t be quick to get an absolute stomping by them. but no you´re too chickenshit so you just spout inane bs on boards. ignorant plebs like you are the bane of this country. i know plenty of working class men and women in both clubs. i mean unless you´re confusing working class with the lumpen prole. the clue is in the name working..
i don´t think you understand the word toff. you seem to be under the impression Irish schools are like Eton paying 30k a year. very few schools come close to that in Ireland. Blackrock boarding perhaps.
Rugby haters like you (basing most of the hatred on prejudicial, anecdotal classism) and Cunningham and McKenna are some of the worst losers going. and they all profess to say they are sports fans. jokeshop.
don´t ramble and spout inane bolloxolgy and then have the balls to turn around and say another poster is rambling. its the height of dickish behaviour
you got to troll better.
criticise rugby for all the criticism above. but base it on classism and prejudice? nah feck off with that crap
Post edited by starkid on3 -
Advertisement
-
Holding tyrants to the fireJoin Date:Posts: 1884
It´s madness that one school can produce 8-9 pro players for Leinster. but on the flip side if that can be done then it can be done all across the board.That's not true. Imagine if, say, Blackrock became a school for soccer rather than rugby. How many international soccer players would their school team develop compared with their long history of developing international rugby players?
My guess is that there would be far, far fewer of the former. Why? Because soccer is a sport with an exponentially larger talent pool than rugby. If any of the major rugby schools became soccer schools they would become non-entities because people outside of the middle-class toff bubble also play it and the posho rugby boys with their collars up wouldn't be able to compete.
Don´t comment on things you have no idea of. Templeogue is a non fee paying school. a fair few of them play in Terenure and Mary´sTerenure RFC and Mary's are affiliated with their eponymous private schools. Letting in a few of the lads from the local school to play with the team may be a philanthropic gesture to the natives but those two teams are still private school rugby clubs.
go up there, take a session and say that to their face. you wouldn´t be quick to get an absolute stomping by them. but no you´re too chickenshit so you just spout inane bs on boards. ignorant plebs like you are the bane of this country.Sure thing, tough guy. I'm sure some roided-up goons with CTE dripping out of their ears would love nothing more than "stomping" someone who doesn't worship at the altar of the divine Terenure College Rugby Team. They can stick to "stomping" other poshos and I'll stick to a life of intellectual rigour and genuine athleticism.
i don´t think you understand the word toff. you seem to be under the impression Irish schools are like Eton paying 30k a year. very few schools come close to that in Ireland. Blackrock boarding perhaps.Terenure College costs €5,550 per academic year(source), St Mary's costs €6,590(source).
Those are a fair bit out of reach for working class families in Ireland, which is fair enough, but don't sit there and tell me they're not for toffs when it costs over 30 grand for a family to send a single student through secondary school.
don´t ramble and spout inane bolloxolgy and then have the balls to turn around and say another poster is rambling. its the height of dickish behaviourYou are rambling.
its quite simple why RTE take a passing interest (and its nowhere near as gushing as it was in the Celtic tiger years thank God).During the Recession and Celtic Tiger years the likes of Blackrock Boy Ryle Nugent massively inflated the relevance of rugby for the average sport viewer in Ireland, to the point that rugby is considered our "fourth sport" when in reality flip all have ever played it here bar a few lads who went to "good schools."
Not that you could tell from the media coverage where the insinuation seems to be that stadiums up and down the country are full of fans from across the entire social strata cheering on their favourite rugby clubs. This isn't true, of course, the vast majority of lower-middle-class-or-less fans from outside of the SoCoDu orbit aren't aware of anything to do with "ruggers" bar the Six Nations.
Irish rugby is a professional sport competing at the top level of its sport against countries with far greater resources and history.Ireland have never progressed past the top eight in the World Cup in a sport ten countries play to any serious level, and their finest moment in history is beating New Zealand in a friendly.
As far as I'm concerned people can watch as much rugby as they like, heck they can even play it (though I wouldn't let my children play due to the issues with concussions etc), but spare me the "Ireland's Greatest Heroes/Modern Day Gladiators" stuff.
In Ireland it's a minority sport, played by a handful of posh secondary schools (apart from in Limerick). Playing a single u14 match for Ireland in soccer is a finer achievement than a long career turning out for the Irish Rugby Team.
0 -
Another thread ruined
My forced fun experience is being 'forced' to spend occasional working days helping out charities. We give the charity our time and then have go back to the office to catch up on the work we've missed. If you don't go you're a monster
8 -
as i said the only one rambling here is you, you absolute fecking eejit. whats your definition of toffs? somebody who earns more than you. like do you consider a tradesman (who earns more than me for the record 30k) a toff? or are you from the school of Mary Lou/Paul Murphy economics? (both privately educated southsiders) people like you are a **** stain on this country. as bad as any d4 dickhead with his heino and classist attituddes. do you know what i do with that 30k, i split half with the mother of my child and send her to a private school ( if it was my choice i wouldnt put she was foreign and thought it was the way, she realises now its all bs) if i can do it, loads can. with a second yeah i wouldn't be able to and it is beyond the reach of many many folk here. no disputing that.
See you're showing your ignorance again. Blackrock do play soccer. as do Terenure (anthony stokes attended till he went to Arsenal). they also, shock horror play GAA. a fair few blackrock people have played for Dublin GAA. Ditto with Belvedere college.
so you think middle class people are toffs? you really haven't done too much intellectual stuff so. A toff by English definition is somebody who is upper class. the hint is in the name. Middle class people aren't upper class. i know plenty of normal middle class people on normal wages sending their kids to that school. and playing rugby. i'm not saying its across the board. and as i said the IRFU and IRB for decades actively fucked this part up. Keith Earls talks about it in his book. the result of that is here we are in 2023 with people like yourself calling rugby players across the board roided up psoshos. it would be funny if it wasn't so sad and pathetic.
intellectual rigour? i see no evidence of that, just sheer plain stupidity. either that or you're an edgelord aged 12.
rugby by playing numbers and financing is our fourth sport. I gave you the figure. there is around 100 k plus registered players, male and female.
you're just an insecure prejudiced classist moron who has probably never set foot in a normal rugby club in his life. the media has literally never stated the stadiums are full. thats in your tiny imagination.just like the steroid abuse.
you realise only 8 countries have won the football World Cup? Again if England or France have multiple thousands more players and clubs than us in rugby, its still an achievement to beat them. The 10 team slag literally has no bearing on beating the cream of the crop in your given sport. its the number 1 sport in NZ, played there like GAA here. Its like London GAA beating Dublin in Croke PArk. its a really really simple concept. if you like sports you'd get it.
there is only a handful of top heavyweights plying their trade in boxing.Theres a long way to the top. if an irish lad came along and beat them you'd be gushing in your praise. I gave you the simple reasons for rugby being low in numbers yet you ignorantly call that rambling. Ireland have failed at multiple World Cups that is true. Also rugby doesn't consider them friendlys. again go up to a local club and try play in a friendly game before you call it that. as i said you'd be absolutely stomped. you wouldn't last a few mins i'd imagine. Go tell Jack McGrath or Paul O'Connell he's a posho.
You put real stock into under age football. Jack Carty of Connacht must really exicte you so. he played under 15 for Ireland in soccer. as did a fair few rugby people. Loads of soccer heads in rugby. but again you're too ignorant to know this.
i feel sorry for how sad you are. really pathetic stuff. hate on rugby all day long for its style, structure, or failure at Irish wc level etc, but doing so based on class lines just makes you look like a plonker. the same way a lad born here in my town of Ballybough and goes to joeys has no choice, neither does a lad who goes to Blackrock.
TLDR - Does Irish rugby rely on private schools too much? 100 per cent. is it changing? yes it is, slowly. Are classist people and grifters on both ends of spectrum holding this country back? 100 per cent. I shouldn't reply to an obvious troll, however in the media this sort of troll exists so must be challenged.
Post edited by starkid on1 -
Holy fcuk definitely tldr☺️☺️
Great thread this👍
0 -
lol. it has to be long to reply to such classist nonsense.
TLDR - people who hate on a sport for percieved class lines are not sports fans. i say that for the ross o caroll kelly types as well. Does rugby have a private school problem? 100 per cent. is it glacially changing? 100 per cent.
i'd say the same to blokes who harp on about soccer being soft (its not) or for thugs etc. all that shite. such boring shite.
anyway i apologise its wildly off topic, can't remember how it veered into rugby talk.
1 -
Jeasus christ whats this rugby shite got to do with forced fun in the work place
10 -
Worst and most annoying ones:
1) Worked with a company where they quite deliberately didn't bother to tell me there was a Christmas party (lovely colleagues) and then the boss got her nose out of joint because i didn't go!
2) A job where the boss would sit in the corner at social events and note (literally with a pen!) about who interacted with whom and then decide to bring it up later on during some review meeting.
3) A place where a manager (who wasn't my manager) kept bringing in pizza and cake and when I politely refused it, I got called out for it in front of people and literally harangued and teased. I didn't particularly want to have to go into the fact that I'm coeliac with my colleagues and I'm very deliberately trying to avoid cholesterol for cardiac reasons, but she kept it up until I eventually had to go through HR to get her to stop harassing me over f**ing pizza. I don't mean just asking once - it was like "Ah go on! You'll have a slice? Are you not having any!? You're no fun!" that kind of stuff. Even when I said I didn't like pizza she kept it up.
4) Was away at an event. Went back to my room, only to discover that I was now sharing it with some random colleague - no warning, nothing. Just came back to find a guy on a cot bed snoring loudly ... I'd have gladly paid for my own room if I'd known. When I brought it up, I was told I was 'being unfriendly' and that I should 'apologise'.
6 -
Holding tyrants to the fireJoin Date:Posts: 1884
Will you relax, man. Dragging your ex and child, into this, calling me names, fantasising about Paul O Connell pounding me. Do you really need to lose your temper defending a load of posh rugby boys?
I've said my piece but I'll reiterate my main point one last time: any talented athlete who goes to Terenure, Mary's, Blackrock, etc are exponentially more likely to play international rugby than if they went to a public, non-rugby school. It's undeniably the private domain of the upper middle classes of SoCoDu.
0 -
No idea where that came out of. Was there a forced rugby match is someone's workplace?
2 -
Advertisement
-
Once worked in a place that held Chipper Friday, every Friday, whether you liked it or not.
It was even creepier that people were expected to bring in good cutlery and plates to eat it, big greasy bag of chips plopped onto willow pattern plates with Newbridge cutlery. They had a kind of rota going on with some people to who would bring in what. And you paid for your own chipper.
I don't like chipper food much and I don't have willow pattern plates or fancy sporks, so I always declined, but always got serious evils from the office harpy who organized this FUN. Greasy, battered, gossipy tea service fun.
7
![[Deleted User]](/applications/dashboard/design/images/defaulticon.png)
