Team Spirit

I'm at a work off-site. In layman terms, that means that we spent the entire day out of the office in meetings, had dinner altogether, and we are spending the night so that we can get up early and start work at 7:30 in the a.m. Oh boy! (Note: sarcasm is difficult to convey, but that was it).

During the day we spent a good portion of the time going over our achievements for the year and then spent two hours team-building. Now I don't want to malign the experience. It's great to be able to get out of the office and do something different, but anyone who thinks that an off-site means you aren't working has clearly never been to one. Here's the deal: you're still with your co-workers, work rules still apply (think politics & hierarchy), and you spend more time together than you would on any other day. When another colleague in a different group asked what we would do at our "Spring Fling", I said that we spend the first day hearing how well we did working really hard last year and day two is spent learning about how much harder we'll need to work next year. Of course there are awards for the high achievers and there's alcohol. (Refer back to work rules still apply). The fact that alcohol is served is not an invitation for getting drunk on the company's dime. It means that you get a glass and hold on to it, and make sure that there isn't some guy wandering around filling it up - nothing good ever comes from that. The last thing you want to happen is to be sitting at the bar next to some guy who tells you he's the CFO and you give him a friendly shove on his shoulder and tell him to "get the fuck out of here. You are not!" only to find out that, well, yes indeed, he really is.

And if you're wondering, no, that wasn't me, but yes, it was a former colleague. Note: former.