A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, I went on a day out team building. It was solidly organised, pleasant and good fun with nice people.

This is what happened.

First we drew facts about ourselves on balloons. This didn’t go down well with one poor soul who whispered “I have a mild phobia of balloons” before backing away.

The day rolled on with “the brains of the organisation” making pretend air-planes out of bits of cardboard and tin foil to transport an egg through the air when we threw it. We were supposed to, this wasn’t a spontaneous outbreak of game playing. This was work, don’t you know.

I made this! Can’t you just smell the teamwork?

We then broke into groups where we had to decide what animal, type of shoe, car and also typeface our team was. This proved problematic. Claiming we were a lion wouldn’t fool anyone, but a bluebottle is nobodies choice. In the end we went with worker ants “as we work hard”.

As proof that we work hard we then spent 15 minutes arguing over which typeface our team was most like. Helvetica won the day, but I am STILL holding out for Comic Sans.

Then a pastiche of 80’s team building days: orienteering! But in a minor way, in a country park, at walking pace. This involved walking past hedgerows in unseasonably warm weather for half an hour, whilst making small talk

The day closed with a small exercise where we wrote down what we thought was the strengths of the person whose name was on a piece of paper. We wrote it down, and passed it on, for the person to our left to add their own. This went on until you opened your piece of paper and revealed the key strengths that people around you thought you had. As I didn’t know two of the people there, I said they were “nice” and they said I “made nice cakes”.

Normally I loathe team days out. I thoroughly enjoyed this one, as the work was never mentioned once and it had nothing to do with teams. It was some people mucking about nicely. I enjoy mucking about. The end.

P.S. erm…I don’t think that it was supposed to be about the work. I never noticed it sneaking in the back door. Normally I can tell the difference.