Annual Department Teambuild

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I survived the teambuild today. I spent most of the day glaring at people. Glaring/frowning is my "normal resting face". Normally I consciously make my face do things so that I don't come across as aggressive. The team dynamics are very dysfunctional at the moment and I've had to deal with some serious intimidation, so I was in no mood to be trying to do my "happy, social face".

I am very exhausted from the whole experience. The way I feel is hard to describe; its like I have worms eating me alive from the inside out. I'm really tired but not sure that I will be able to sleep. The worst of it is that the team dysfunctionalities were mot satisfactorily dealt with so I'm in a state of mental unrest.

Why post about this? For me, posting on such experiences is cathartic; I generally feel better for doing so. I'd be interested in hearing of the experiences of others in teambuild situations.

HAHAHAHAHA - Not laughing at you, just that having been there, done that, I know what it feels like. Later I would replay in memory the memorable quotes from the corporate a**holes and suckbutts and they would all have helium voices. I never got the concept that inter-team competitiveness was somehow acceptable to the organizers of these dysfunctions.

Wow. I had a job that required that sort of thing once. I LEFT IT after discussing with my manager if I could be either excluded from the activity or take that day off because it was detrimental to me, and they said NO. Now I work in a field that doesn't do that sort of thing at all (we haven't even had a "department meeting" in months, which isn't mandatory).

All I can say is, "discuss it with your boss, give them the opportunity to understand it makes you uncomfortable. Be constructive, they might understand. If it doesn't work, then perhaps it's time to consider a new job or even a new field of work?"

If you do talk to your boss, avoid phrases such as "I need" and "why can't I", try to explain in a way THEY can understand and in a way that expresses how you want to be included but the methods are very difficult and draining for you, and you don't want that to ruin it for others.

We had one at my office last week. I survived the team building OK. The actual activity wasn't that bad, but afterwards we all went to a loud, crowded restaurant for dinner. I ended up leaving early, primarily because I was anxious about the time because it was running later than I had expected. However, later that evening I went into shutdown when my wife tried to talk about something serious with me.

I left a job when forced to do a teambuild too, though it was mainly because it was so inane and cruel. It was a bad labor market, people were getting fired left and right, and the teambuilding charlatan insisted on throwing in bosses and peons together, where the peons had to pretend to be chummy with the bosses. I saw one almost have a nervous breakdown, she was so scared she was going to lose her job. It was horrible and it went on for hours. I said that's it, I'm done. Never regretted it.

The most recent "Team Building Exercise" that I attended took place at a strip joint before my current job. No one from my department told me ahead of time exactly where we were going, and I assumed that we were all going to the kind of "Gentleman's Club" that you might see in an old Sherlock Holmes movie -- heavy upholstery, quiet conversations, and tuxedo'ed butlers serving martinis all around. Instead, it was stained furniture, loud music, and topless women serving lapdances all around.

The others got mad at me because I had only two twenties and some change in my pocket, and the cover charge and two-drink minimum took up most of that.

I left about 10 minutes after we got there, and took the bus back to the office, where one of the VPs cheerfully asked where everyone was. So I told him. After the firings, I resigned to get away from all of the threats and hatred from the remaining co-workers.

Just think of it as time spent in a Borg assimilation chamber.

Sounds ghastly, so ghastly in fact that I'm unlikely to take up the offer to think about it. You will have to explain further and reduce my general suspicion