Forced "fun" in the workplace

I was once in a job where we had a meeting on Monday to discuss goals and a meeting on Friday to discuss how the goals went for the week.

The problem was you had to pick two work goals and two personal goals. Work goals - grand, no issue. Personal goals ended up being "I will try to eat healthier" , "I will try to go for a walk at least twice this week", "Im going to get a haircut" - it was pathetic. All irrelevant bullshit and in the name of team building/bonding or whatever. It didn't last long for me anyway

Personally I have zero tolerance for any of that cr^p and always just say NO to all those extra curricular activities. Fortunately I'm really good at my job and valuable to the company, so they leave me alone and never create any drama about my non participation in such events.

I've never heard such bullshyt in all my life.

And I've heard some bullshyt....

Whoever unquestionably imported American office culture, unquestionably, into this Country, wants bloody shooting.

The workplace competitive drinking sessions are starting to grate. This year I've started excusing myself from them. I'd rather drink with people I choose to drink with and at my own pace.

I worked for an Irish company for about 6 years, which was then taken over by a British multinational crowd at the beginning of 2020. Horrible altogether. They had this in-house system that would, at the start of each month, e-mail you a list of 6 employees from anywhere in the world. You were obliged to contact these staff and then rate them based on your experience. At the next month’s company meeting, the employees who got the best ratings were revealed, as well as naming and shaming those who didn’t do it. I remember on one occasion that I got the company CEO in the UK. He never even bothered to get back to me, but he wasn’t called out of course!

I lasted about 8 or 9 months before jumping ship, It was a busy enough job without wasting my time on social crap.

😂 That was hilarious but would they invite Brian on these kind of bonding sessions?

I see you added me to your enemy list again, Brian. You’re not supposed to use the office intranet for stuff like this.

Ah lads, you would hate my job! First, most of us work remotely - that's an important point.

We have morning stand ups for a half an hour four times a week. We spend the first 15 minutes talking socially, partially in a our office's second language, which we are all either proficient in, or are studying, and then we move onto work topics for the second half. Our work is fairly dynamic, and our team is small enough, so we could have new projects landing or updates to projects that concern us on a daily basis.

We have a social 30 minute morning call with our partner on the day that we don't have a stand up, and then we have a team lunch that day for an hour.

We have two other social calls with other teams once a week. One of them is from 5.30pm to 6.30pm, so it does eat into our free time a bit, but also into our working time. We chat and play games remotely on this one. I usually go to this, and we have a bit of craic. The other one I actually don't join because it's mostly made up of people from a different location, and they end up chatting about stuff going on in their office. I just stopped going to those after sitting silently and working in the background while trying to look semi-interested on screen.

Then we have buddies. We all have a randomly assigned buddy, who we chat with at least a week.

The we have the walking and talking call once a week, where we all go out for a walk, go grocery shopping, whatever, for an hour, while chatting. That's across about seven different teams and we get split into groups of four or five. I'd join this one maybe half of the time.

The Christmas party is something that we're very much encouraged to attend. Very few people don't go, unless we have a valid reason. We also have a Christmas team dinner, and we are travelling to, and staying at, our office location for two nights for these. We tell clients that we cannot travel to them on those days, because being on office site is the priority.

We have an annual two days away during summer (Thursday, Friday), where the days are split between presentations and activities. I missed last year's for a valid reason, but it was very valid. Nothing frivolous like cousin Susan coming to visit would be an accepted reason to miss this.

In my last job, we had weekends away twice a year where you really were expected to attend. Skiing in the winter, and bbq beside a lake in the summer. All paid for, and that's great, but I wasn't into a weekend away sharing a room with one of my colleagues.

But, for my current company, most of this stuff is built in purely because we are all working remotely, and I have to say that I see the benefit. The remote working was put into place because of Covid and many of us weren't around in this company pre-Covid when people actually worked in the office and would get to know each other with casual chats during the day or over lunch.

I was talking with one of the guys from another team recently who doesn't have the morning calls, or lunches, and he felt very isolated from his team. There are other ways around this, but I would miss our calls now if we didn't have them. Sure, I don't want to be best friends with all of my colleagues, but it's nice to have a relationship with them, and we all genuinely like each other on my team. We have a very fair working environment, if we have personal appointments, etc., there's no problem with taking them during the day, as we are all adults and we know what work needs to be done and are trusted to do it. If we had to miss a call because of work, that's absolutely fine. If, occasionally, we were working late and wanted to skip the morning call for a sleep instead, that's fine - we'd get caught up on anything important work-wise afterwards. We're strongly encouraged to take lunch and breaks, as the hazard of getting glued to your work when working remotely is widely acknowledged. I'd much prefer this to a clinical environment where we're expected to sit at our desks 9-1 and 2-6, and have no communication outside of work only.

Actually, edit to add, we try not to do overhours, unless really necessary, and where we do we get either x1.5 in money or in time in lieu. x2 if it’s after 10pm, or on weekends or public holidays. Travel time is included in this. We can’t sell our holidays either (as we could in previous jobs), so you really do take them. It’s not the worst place I suppose!

this video is fitting here I think.

Workplaces are peer pressure central. From working unpaid overtime every day in order to impress/conform to social BS like lotto syndicates and collections because someone got engaged. Draws anytime there is a World Cup - fiver into the pot and you get Costa Rica while some arsehole who earns more than you gets Brazil.

In many ways, work is like an extension of secondary school. Control, bullying, peer pressure, popularity contests, peacocking. Dossers and spoofers get plaudits for how high profile they are - like in school where the teacher who covers half the LC curriculum because they are training a sports team or organising a musical has everyone licking their arse, Meanwhile all their class are having to pay for grinds to pass the LC.

I really do wonder about a lot of Boardsies sometimes.

Best of all is the fake anonymous engagement feedback. Employees say they want better pay, recognition and chance of progression in the workplace. This never happens, instead we get all that has been mentioned on this thread. Funny how some workplaces pretend they don’t know why turnover of staff is so high.

I actually don't see how this actively discriminates against many people. People who have disabilities or caring responsibilities for parents or older people do not have to attend the on site activities if this wouldn't work for them. That is definitely a valid reason not to attend. People with children can attend if they have somebody to look after their children. If not, then they don't attend, and that's absolutely understood. Two of my colleagues are pregnant at the moment, and they are traveling absolutely nowhere, unless they want to, and if it is safe for them to do so, and that takes into consideration whether they would actually feel comfortable travelling.

For the rest of it, it actually is quite useful for people with personal responsibilities. They can work from home, they can pick up their children in the middle of the day if required, they can attend appointments with people in their care. It is very flexible in that regard.

On a general level though, my job does require travel for project work. If I wasn't in a position to do that, then I wouldn't do it. If long term circumstances changed, then I would talk about it and see what could be changed in my role, and/or look for another job.