no one likes corporate team-building

by Alison Green on September 23, 2024

A corporate “hiking retreat” made headlines last month when a participant was left stranded overnight on a 14,230-foot mountain. The employee was on a day-long “team-building” hike, and he was left behind after the rest of his colleagues made it down the mountain safely. Emergency responders found him stranded in a gully the next day.

A corporate team-building event ending in disaster will come as no surprise to anyone who’s been forced to participate in one. While most don’t leave employees literally stranded in the wilderness, they do frequently put them in physically or emotionally uncomfortable situations.

At Slate today, I wrote about where these activities go wrong — and what would be more effective. You can read it here.

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  1. RussianInTexas*

    The first one, with “say what you don’t like about each other”.
    Do people still not know that you have to keep it to the bland work stuff vs personal stuff in these things? So say something like “I don’t like how Sue does not start e-mails without a Hello” vs “I hate how Sue’s voice sound first thing in the morning”.

    1. Ban the ADL*

      omg this! you wouldn’t believe how many people use these as opportunities to air their personal grievances

      1. RVA Cat*

        At least Festivus has dinner to go with the Airing of Grievances.

        Hmm, all those athletic ones would be Feats of Strength.

      2. I love SQL*

        This reminded me of a recent HR meeting my team had.

        The entire point of the multi hour meeting was to air personal grievances. Of course, HR described this as a feedback tutoring session, but we were all forced to give negative feedback to two different coworkers and then rest of us has to give feedback on the feedback itself.

    2. Audrey Puffins*

      “I don’t like how Lewis puts the milk in first when he’s making tea.”

      And I tell Lewis this fairly often. Anyone forced to partake in this task should keep it at a similar level, if you can’t outright rebel

      2. NotBatman*

        That is an excellent solution that I wish I’d known for a similar godawful exercise we had to do in my high school. “I don’t like that Fergus has cute cat pictures on his desk but we haven’t met his cats”, “I don’t like that Betty makes me laugh when I’m in the middle of sulking about a difficult customer”, “I don’t like that Joaquin always remembers how to spell ‘imbricate’ because I never can”, etc.

    3. No Longer Gig-less Data Analyst*

      My manager a few jobs ago was pretty good at team building stuff, but she did this one where we all were supposed to rate each others strengths and weaknesses and give specific examples. We were a small team and we would definitely recognize handwriting and/or be able to figure out who said what for context. I made my answers as vague and boring as humanly possible, and when she gave me my packet of “feedback” I took it home and threw it in the trash without reading a word. I wouldn’t have minded if she did this for her own review, but I did not need to know my co-workers unfettered opinions about me.

      She was a great manager in that she could take even the harshest of feedback with appreciation and a smile, but she didn’t seem to get that most of us were not like that, and would probably take what was written personally and find it hurtful.

      1. Alicent*

        We had to do that for a year long college class. It involved animal care and around the clock coverage of shifts. I was secretary and thus responsible for getting everyone to sign up, even those who tried to do the bare minimum so I wasn’t the favorite person sometimes. Our faculty facilitator was later diagnosed with a brain tumor, but during our evaluation he berated me to tears about what mine supposedly said and that everyone hated me. It ruined my year and I barely made it through our end of year banquet where he was also rude to me. I couldn’t bring myself to read them for a couple months, but when I did (in a fit of rage) the evals were all SUPER NICE with a little constructive criticism. I was so upset that he misled me, but I didn’t know he was ill for another 6 months when someone told me he died and how. I still get kind of stressed out by evals.

            1. dawbs*

              yes…and then I would have stashed it in the back of a cupboard somewhere and stumbled on it twice a year for the rest of eternity; getting upset every time.

              (I’m not saying this is the right thing to do; throwing it away seems wisest. But it’s what I would do, in spite of myself)

      3. Texan In Exile*

        My boss suggested I do a 360 and I said I would rather know what I needed to do – in terms of objectives – to be promoted and that if I was never going to be promoted, I didn’t see the point of hearing what other people have to say about me.

        (I never did get information about what was required for each position level.)

    4. Successful Birthday Rememberer*

      This is so bad that it’s funny. And it’s only funny because I didn’t have to be there or participate.

    5. Seashell*

      Even if it’s just bland work stuff, I can’t see this ever being a good idea. Why do bland work complaints need to be aired in front of everyone?

      Also, I have plenty of co-workers who I have never had much interaction with, so I’d be hard-pressed to think of anything I don’t like about them. I don’t really think anything about them one way or another.

      1. goddessoftransitory*

        Exactly. It would be pretty embarrassing to go “Steve…I mean Mark…oh, it’s Ethan? Well, I guess I wish I knew you better” because I still can’t keep everybody’s names straight and I’ve been working with them in the same room for eons.

    6. Observer*

      Do people still not know that you have to keep it to the bland work stuff vs personal stuff in these things

      You would think so!

      But here is the thing. Even if people *did* keep it bland, this is a bad idea. Because that winds up being nit-picky stuff more often than not, and that’s its own kind of problem. And in general, it’s just so negative.

      Then you are dealing with the fact that this is already a dysfunctional team that is not getting along. How does anyone not realize that this is going to go wring very quickly?!

      1. MigraineMonth*

        Yeah, there is no version of this exercise that results in a team as functional as the one you started with, much less one that works together better.

        So many of these exercises notice a behavior of high-trust and collaborative teams (they share their authentic selves, they give and receive critical feedback, etc) and thinks it’s a magic solution to make teams work better.

        Yes, happy people smile more, but that’s *not the reason* that they’re happier. Forcing unhappy people to smile *will not* make them happier.

    7. Dek*

      Honestly, that doesn’t seem much better. Now you’ve got everyone anxious about the little stuff they do “wrong” and focusing on that about others as well.

      1. MigraineMonth*

        “Jane already seemed like a busybody, but now that I know she’s judging me for the number of spaces I put after a period in internal emails and is watching the way I prepare my coffee, I hate her guts.”

    8. SunnyShine*

      I work in manufacturing where professionalism isn’t a big deal unless your one of the top leaders. Plus, I have so many Neurodivergents and young workers that they would take this literally and not understand how to handle this. and Sometimes they may not understand why their feedback hurts others, even if they didn’t mean to. Or people might take the little feedback and still be hurt over it.

      Instead, I would refuse to participate.

    9. LL*

      Even that’s way too much for this. I don’t want to hear my coworkers talk about what they don’t like about the way I work.

    10. Pay no attention...*

      Yeah, even bland can backfire. You never know what sort of insecurities people have that could cause what feels like a bland work remark to be really hurtful, “Deborah leaves her copies on the Xerox for half a day and I have to riffle through them to find my stuff” turns into Deborah having flashbacks of high school bullies snagging her journal from her backpack and reading it out to the class. IDK. It’s just better to not make anything a personal comment. Criticize the office equipment or a company policy if you have to air problems, but not the people.

    11. Fleabag's Inner Monologue*

      I had to do that one as part of a youth work program I did in my late teens (kind of like AmeriCorps), and one of my colleagues said she wanted me to “be less Jewish.”

    12. All smileys at once*

      If the team building organizers can’t recognize that doing this is a really bad idea I won’t blame normal employees for also not knowing this.

  2. Putting the Dys in Dysfunction*

    This type of manager watches too many movies where people who don’t get along face a serious physical challenge together and come out magically bonded (if they’re still alive).

    They don’t need a team building event, they need reality explained to them.

    1. Liane*

      This reminds me of a scene from a military science fiction novel. Two squads from opposing sides of a war have to work together to get out of a third faction’s prison. Most deal with it reasonably well, but there is one from each side who don’t and their respective high ranking sergeants are discussing it. Human Sgt: if this were a fiction video, one would save the other from falling into a lava pit. Alien Sgt: Yeah we have those stories too. But this is reality, so they’ll probably come to blows pushing each other in.

      1. Cimorene-turned-Morwen*

        Off topic but I love Tanya Huff too :)
        And on topic: I can be judgmental about my coworkers when I’m in a crappy mood, so the last thing I need is a whole new set of circumstances where I can judge my colleagues based on Who Brought a Bluetooth Speaker Hiking, for example.

        2. SALC*

          The Valor series by Tanya Huff… It’s space marines (and later space police!) but really fun. The prison book is the 4th book in the first series

          2. Lime green Pacer*

            Just finished the audiobook, can definitely recommend! The first four books are included with Audible Plus in Canada, if you’re a subscriber.

            1. MBK*

              How’s the narrator? I find the reader totally makes or breaks an audiobook for me. I started one a while back that I was really looking forward to, and the narrator annoyed me so much that I haven’t even been able to read the regular book because her intonation is stuck in my head.

    2. goddessoftransitory*

      Or watch the scene in Deep Blue Sea when Samuel Jackson’s character starts to do a big leadership speech.

      1. IHavetheBestJobEver!*

        +1000
        My best friend and I saw the movie in the theater because SLJ was in the movie and actually screamed with laughter at that scene-thanks so much for bringing back that memory!

    3. fhqwhgads*

      It has been fairly well proven that shared trauma does bond people. But it’s still a ridiculous and stupid idea to attempt to traumatize people in order for them to bond. That’s completely missing the point.

  3. Dasein9 (he/him)*

    The Vision: Team goes through exercises, bonds, and becomes a lean profit machine.

    The Reality: Employee dies at desk and nobody notices for four days.

      1. Jeanine*

        Yessssss. I used to work for that company too, and the fact that someone died at their desk and wasn’t found for 4 days there doesn’t surprise me. They are a horrible company.

        2. Elizabeth West*

          I was forced to get a Wells Fargo-backed store card when I bought my sofa — that’s how this retailer finances purchases. It was my third day here, I didn’t know where anything else was, and I needed a sofa pretty much immediately, so I sucked it up and paid it off early. I refuse to use it for anything else, but if I close it, it’ll ding my credit, so I’m just letting it sit there until they close it for me. If they do…

    2. H.Regalis*

      I can see that happening at my job. We have a few floors where 99% of the people work remotely, so there are dozens of cubicles standing empty. You can easily be the only person on the whole floor and no one would hear you if you called for help.

  4. m0rgan*

    I wish someone had written in to Alison regarding the stranded coworker! I need inside info on what all those employees and managers were thinking – for the life of me, I can’t understand why you would abandon someone on the side of a mountain and not notify authorities he was missing until hours later. Even in the most toxic workplaces you have to be a particular type of cruel or aloof person to throw any sort of safety/well-being concerns out the window. Mind-boggling!

    1. Angstrom*

      It didn’t sound deliberate — the version I read said the group decided to split, and each thought he went with the other group.

      1. Momma Bear*

        The article I found said he was left to summit alone and then even though he’d contacted them and was clearly lost, no one reported him missing until 9PM.

        1. datamuse*

          That entire story blows my mind. I’m not a climber but I hike and backpack and have met quite a few climbers. You never, *ever* do what they did. Incredibly irresponsible.

          1. Charlotte Lucas*

            Yeah. I hike regularly, but you need to stay with your buddy. (There’s a big difference between a nature walk and a potentially dangerous hike.)

              1. Charlotte Lucas*

                Once you can fall to your death or severe injury, you definitely need a buddy.

                Unfortunately, we have some popular places to hike where people seem really unaware of the danger.

              2. Betty Beep Boop*

                That mountain is a 14er. The grey area is a LOT closer to sea-level than 14 000 feet.

                I sincerely hope that SAR is billing that company for every cent of that rescue, and also that they had the opportunity to have a few words with the idiots who left him up there.

            2. Girasol*

              You hike regularly. I’ll bet the folks involved in this event don’t, not any of them, but just figured that they were macho guys and how hard could it be? That’s the only way that I can make sense of their mutual bad decisions followed by even more bad decisions.

            3. Artemesia*

              This is the narrative of little kids and teens lost on family hikes and never found — they just ran a bit ahead and were to wait for the family — and they are never seen again.

          2. Ontariariario*

            From what was mentioned on here, he didn’t go with the group that was summitting but didn’t want to turn back with the group that was only going partway. He told that one group that he would continue on and catch up to the other group. Each thought that he was with the other. I hike, and what he did was wrong, though the original group should have checked that he returned safely. It didn’t sound like any of the hikers were irresponsible if he decided to hike by himself.

            1. Seeking Second Childhood*

              when he reached them to say he was lost they said “just go back up and come down the other way” — no, that’s the point where he needs help!

              1. Slow Gin Lizz*

                Yeah, *that* was spectacularly bad advice. Never ever tell someone to go back UP a mountain if they are on the way down. That’s a great way to completely exhaust them, plus the top of the mountain is going to be a lot colder and less protected than the lower slopes, which will be a big issue if night is falling and temps are dropping anyway.. 14ers in CO are all above treeline (afaik) and being above treeline is a LOT more dangerous when the weather gets colder. And that’s not even taking into account the fact that a storm was rolling in, which makes the top of the mtn even more dangerous.

                100% the group should have told him to stay where he was (as long as he was in the trees and therefore protected from the weather) or try to help him find an actual trail to follow and then they could pick him up at that trailhead. Everyone in this situation sucks, but that part of the advice was particularly awful. And I agree that the moment he called and said he was lost, they should have called in the experts.

            2. Lenora Rose*

              Any hiker who LET him go off by himself, out of anyone’s sight, to catch up with another group without at least one buddy was in fact irresponsible.

              The question is, these being regular employees and not experts, did they KNOW that was the rules for mountain hikes? What was their pre-hike safety talk like?

              There are so many different points of failure in the story it’s hard to say which ones are worse or worst, but the one thing I can’t agree with is saying the people who left him were not irresponsible. The best case scenario is they were ignorant, not wilful.

        2. Despachito*

          How I understood it was that he decided to leave the group and go to the summit alone. And that he was a higher-up so no one pushed back.

          If this is true everyone involved was irresponsible, and what was supposed to be a teambuilding experience was rather a team-wrecking experience.

            1. Despachito*

              This is how I see it as well.

              And I am normally a huge fan of FAFO approach, but not when someone’s life is at stake. If the version I heard is correct he was stupid and irresponsible and totally against the alleged team spirit to do that but the rest of the group is not off the hook because you can’t leave a person to potentially die even if he is the hugest jerk on the green face of Earth.

              1. Betty Beep Boop*

                I mean, sure, except that the point of “team building exercises” is to take people out of their comfort zone.

                If you wilfully take people who are not competent to do a wilderness hike into the wilderness, *you are responsible for making sure there are competent guides in adequate numbers to make sure they don’t do dumb shit because they do not know what is dumb nor should they be trusted to deduce it*.

                Also, acting like the hugest jerk on the green face of Earth is a known early signal of hypothermia AND of altitude sickness.

        3. Ellis Bell*

          Yes, the articles I’ve read were incredibly laissez-faire about the fact he was alone and lost, simply texting him back to “go back and find the right trail”. It seems like a lot of basic safety advice was just ignored on this trip; stuff the company could have ensured: everyone having a buddy, a rule of not leaving anyone behind, giving people high visibility wear, giving people emergency numbers and telling them to call mountain rescue if they get isolated and lost, instead of random untrained coworkers (you never know how many calls you’ll be able to make and emergency numbers work in places that general numbers don’t). Isn’t the whole point of these things to not let each other down?!

          2. Artemesia*

            When I took my scout troop canoeing I was required to have a life guard in each canoe — I thought this was excessive but recruited 6 people with life guard training. And boy was I glad when the assistant leader who was TOLD by me not to take the 10 year old novices out of the cove into the lake decided to do just that and all 6 canoes could not get back to shore against off shore winds. I was responsible and I had 6 canoes full of kids in trouble ( no cell phones then, so I could not communicate with them) — BUT each canoe had a lifeguard in it so that mitigated the worry. I went to a nearby military base on the lake and they went out and got the 4 canoes that did not manage to make it back to shore. What a good rule the scouts had.

            1. Jen*

              Well, it sounded like they used their own gear as markers. Presumably they needed it back and the lone hiker wouldn’t have been able to carry everything on his own. But that sounds like a bad plan from the start.

        4. WoodswomanWrites*

          Yes, I’m a hiker and backpacker and it boggles my mind that his colleagues knew for hours that he was lost and didn’t call for help until well into the night. Regardless of whatever misunderstandings happened sooner, this delay is inexcusable.

      2. HA2*

        Yeah, that’s what I read as well. One group decided to take the longer route and go for the summit, the other group decided to turn back earlier, and each thought this guy was with the others.

        1. Observer*

          Oh, they knew he was lost.

          Yes, his getting left behind was a result of stupidity and total lack of attention to basic safety protocols, rather than knowing leaving someone behind. But they knew he was lost by early afternoon.

      4. Orv*

        That happened with a group of friends once, when we were at an arcade. We got to dinner and one guy, I’ll call him Brian, was missing. This conversation ensued:
        – Me: “Where’s Brian?”
        – Jane: “I thought he rode with you and your wife.”
        – Me: “OUR CAR IS A TWO-SEATER.”
        Cue Jane frantically driving back to the arcade, where Brian was patiently waiting for her.

      5. MassMatt*

        Oh I DESPERATELY want to write the “what did we learn?” debrief for this hiking trip. Here goes:

        1–Bob (and who knows who else on the team) is expendable.

        2–Our group is incapable of keeping track of our own members’ basic safety, or even presence.

        3–Responsibility for even basic safety is something that falls through the cracks as different groups each assume the other is taking responsibility. Thus, no one is ever responsible.

        4–Our group is incapable of decision-making or asking for help, acting paralyzed when faced with emergency. Items are only escalated at the last possible minute after valuable time is lost. No one is in charge or responsible.

        5–Documentation/guidelines (items left to lead a trail back) will be inexplicably removed, despite the need for them for emergency use.

        6–Our leadership is unable to plan even a simple team building outing without jeopardizing team member safety. WTH were they doing hiking up a mountain with the possibility of freezing rain? Unless this was a group of outdoor guides, this was an idiotic choice.

        7–It bears repeating, everyone here is considered expendable.

        I can only imagine how awkward things were come Monday!

      6. Tiredofit all*

        It was far worse. The others took away the markets for how to get back, did not call 911 till night time.

      7. goddessoftransitory*

        Yep; each group assumed he was with the other group. This is why a professional should lead these types of outings and be responsible for keeping track of everyone, like they do on dive boats.

    3. I'm just here for the cats!!*

      They obviously didn’t have a buddy situation. I read some of the articles and it sounded like there were 2 groups and each thought that he was wit the other group. Why they left without him is another thought all toghether. Rule #1 with large groups in outdoors buddy system Rule #2 is you all check in before you leave.

    4. Meep*

      It is my understanding he pulled out ahead of everyone else and they didn’t realize he was lost until they got down. They tried to set him on the right path, but he just got more lost. Then they called the rescue squad.

    5. Wildbow*

      Happened to my brother during a night skiing ski trip with school. As they all were getting organized to get everyone on the bus, people wondered where my brother (10 y.o.?) was. Turns out, he’d gone off a ramp sideways and landed in deep snow in the trees. His skis sort of planted in pointing skyward so he couldn’t really raise himself up, and the deep snow meant he couldn’t reach his skis to get his feet free of the skis. Everyone just zipped by, oblivious to the cries for help. My dad was with us and thought he’d gone ahead and caught a ski lift with friends. Friends thought he was with my dad. After they realized, they went down the main hill slowly and eventually heard him.

      Funny thing is, I was telling a story a week ago about how we played hide and seek with cousins while on vacation, and we all forgot about him. He kept hiding for over an hour, then emerged in tears. Poor guy.

    6. AJ*

      I wrote to her :)
      And I think a bunch of other people must have too because the link is the nation wide one but I sent her the local one. Craziness and anti-Colorado behavior.

    7. Hlao-roo*

      There was some discussion of the stranded coworker on the August 30 open thread. Search for “becca*” to find the start of the discussion. There are a couple of links to different news articles that have details (more details in the NPR article than the ABC news article).

      From the articles, it seems like he unintentionally got separated from the groups. And there were multiple groups, so each group likely assumed he was part of the other group. When they descended and realized he was still on the mountain, they were in cell phone communication with them (he was sending them his location, and they were trying to remotely direct him back to the trail). Two of his coworkers started back up the mountain to look for him at dusk. Then they called search and rescue. To me the whole sequence of events seems like “group of inexperienced hikers, not well versed in the buddy system/headcounts/when to call search and rescue” instead of “cruel and aloof people who didn’t care at all that their coworker was missing.”

      I’ll link in a reply to this comment.

      3. Slow Gin Lizz*

        Ohhhh, ok, I feel a little better, then. I wonder also if maybe he was like, “Plz don’t call S&R, I can totally find my way….” and then when they lost contact with him they were like, “Yeah, we gotta call S&R now.”

        1. MigraineMonth*

          Except from what I can tell from the article details, they *didn’t* call when they lost contact with him *during a storm with freezing rain and high winds*. I would have expected even people without much experience with hiking to think it was an emergency at that point. Instead they sent a couple of employees back up the mountain to look for him, and didn’t call S&R until 9pm.

          Unfortunately S&R can’t do much *in the dark and high winds*, which is why they didn’t find him until the next day.

          It also sounds like the lost hiker kept attempting the descent instead of staying put, which was both dangerous (he fell more than 20 times), and it made it more difficult for S&R to locate him since he’d wandered from his last known location. Pro tip: if you ever are lost in the wilderness, *sit down* and wait for help.

          1. zuzu*

            My cousin once got separated from her family during a hike and wound up having to spend the night outdoors while they looked for her. She was wearing shorts and a sleeveless top, so it wasn’t long before she got really cold.
            Fortunately, she remembered the advice to stay put, found a nice fir tree to shelter under, and wrapped her waist-length hair around herself to stay warm. They found her the next morning.
            And far from putting her off the wilderness, she wound up working for Fish & Game.

          2. Ineffable Bastard*

            Also they only tried to find him at dusk, when they could get in danger themselves. I am very ignorant on hiking things, but even I know that they should have said “Bob, stay put. We’re calling S&R and if you stay in place it will be easier for them to find you” even if he insisted he could do it by himself.

      4. Elle*

        I think you’ve got it right. Most people don’t realize how fast things can turn bad when you’re out in nature, even on a well-trafficked trail. The average person is woefully unprepared w/r/t decision making in the outdoors.

    8. Allie*

      I was left behind on a mountain as a kid at a summer camp. The leaders didn’t do a head count and no one realized I was missing since I was a quiet, shy kid. I eventually found my way back to the camp during dinner, but so many things could have gone wrong.

      As an adult, any time I take a group, kids or adults, anywhere, I do headcounts basically every 20 minutes lol.

  5. Apex Mountain*

    The examples given in the article are beyond bad but there can be some good ones too. One I did a few years ago involved a bunch of us putting together bicycles to give to underprivileged kids, so that was pretty cool. Others have been various volunteer days where you’re helping out with a food drive or similar.

    1. Mark This Confidential And Leave It Laying Around*

      But how is that worthwhile to the business? What has it got to do with your job? Those are worthy things in and of themselves but nothing about my work has to do with bike mechanics or food service.

      1. cosmicgorilla*

        Activities like that can help because you’re experiencing your teammates in a more casual setting.

        They help relationship-building and don’t require you to be vulnerable or disclose deeply personal information.

        You get to focus on a task – the pressure is off because it’s not work-related and you’re not being forced to soul-searxhm You get to just casually interact.

        Team bonding doesn’t have to be related to your job. It’s better when it isn’t. It’s team bonding, not skills-building.

        1. Yadah*

          Exactly this, the best “team building” events I’ve ever been to are ones where the activity had very little to do with the actual business because it allows you to interact with coworkers in a new and casual way.
          Plus it helps get the conversation away from business so you can get a break from “work talk” and avoid the activity becoming an extended meeting with a “fun” backdrop.

          1. Dek*

            Yeah, sometimes our staff association will host bingo lunches or movies with popcorn. It’s super low-key, incredibly option, and a nice change of pace.

          3. Elizabeth West*

            100%, especially the second part. Food days always end up revolving around work talk, but doing something else, particularly if it’s off-site, seems to be a
            better way to shift that focus.

        2. 1-800-BrownCow*

          Relationship-building and team bonding are great when you like your team. But if you have a small team and if someone on your team you barely tolerate at work, doing some “team-building” activity with them outside of work can be unbearable. I have a person at my work that I can usually avoid interacting with during work that tries bossing people around. However, given their position in the company they can tell people what they think they should be doing, but in reality can’t force people to do things their way. But yes, I attended a team-building even with them years ago and many of us in the group were extremely frustrated at the end of it because this person basically took over and felt they were in charge. The event ended after a few arguments where a couple people walked away angry (understandable if you were there) and basically everyone saying no to any future team events if this one person was included, even if the event was for a good cause.

          My company does a lot of community volunteer events too. Not required, but encouraged and sign-ups are posted. If this particular person signs up (thankfully rare), then many people won’t sign up because the person is not pleasant to be around.

        3. Ashley*

          I have done the bike thing company mandated fun days. Figured might as well help people instead of waste the budget on stuff no one wants. It is much more about interacting in a casual environment. It was also interesting to see who read instructions and who had zero interest in ever using a wrench.

        4. Ineffable Bastard*

          I like this approach. I do not have the coordination to use tools safely but could help cleaning the bikes or finding the right parts or passing tools or even bringing water or reading instructions aloud if needed. It does not involve alcohol and food or demands that everyone has the same body abilities and skills.

      2. Ellis Bell*

        That’s not the case for everyone though; both those examples are very much connected to my line of work.

      3. I'm just here for the cats!!*

        well neither does any of the other idiotic team building activities. It’s not always about your work.

      4. hohumdrum*

        I think I’m just a much less dedicated employee than anyone here, because I absolutely love getting to screw around all day and still get paid. I don’t care if it relates to the business or not lol.

        But also I think my perspective on this is skewed from working my entire career in front-line non-profit work, where the only employee bonus we ever get is sometimes they let us take the leftovers home after an event. It’s mind boggling to me that other companies pay for like whole weekend vacations! I would happily do some stupid team building event over a weekend at some retreat I can’t afford on my own. The complaints on here on that front always kind of read like someone complaining about their second home in the hamptons to someone who can barely afford to rent a room to me personally.

    2. Apex Mountain*

      This is like once a year – it’s volunteering so it probably doesn’t have anything to do with your day job. Lots of companies do this – i’ve never seen them be mandatory however so you wouldn’t have to do it in any event.

      1. Salty Caramel*

        and when you don’t do it, for whatever reason, you get dinged for “not being a team player.”

        1. Myrin*

          Or people don’t even realise whether you’ve participated or not – unless you are friendly and looked forward to doing stuff together – because the events are, indeed, voluntary (this is the case where I work).

          1. Pizza Rat*

            I don’t know if your workplace is the exception or if all the places I’ve worked are a minority, but I have never been to a team building event where attendance wasn’t taken.

            1. Our Business Is Rejoicing*

              The team building things my current department does are entirely optional, and no attendance is taken and they are part of no one’s review. First of all, they’re not planned by management; they’re planned by a group of employees, so maybe you could just call them “team outings.” They’ve been a real assortment of things like axe throwing (and no one forced anyone to actually throw), escape rooms, and museum scavenger hunts. No BS ‘Survivor’ things, no excessive physical activity, no trust circles, and no woo-woo synergy activities. They are also always during the afternoon on work days, so no one’s sacrificing their family time to come deal with corporate forced rejoicing.

              1. allathian*

                Yes, this. And in my org, managers are expressly forbidden from dinging their employees on the “team player” metric if they don’t show up for our entirely voluntary team building stuff. I’m not a manager but I’ve seen the handbook.

              2. Grizabella the Glamour Cat*

                The idea of axe throwing as a recreational activity, much less as a team building event, blows my mind. It sounds incredibly dangerous, and I’m having a hard time imagining how it could be done without extreme risk to life and limb. Do not want.

                1. hohumdrum*

                  they let drunk people do it at the renaissance festival every year without injury or concern. It’s actually very fun!

                2. Lenora Rose*

                  There’s a lot of basic safety rules and some rudimentary teaching. It’s not much different from an archery range, except shorter.

                  Targets are behind a line, and the area behind and to either side is blocked off; the flooring or turf will be something that absorbs impact and doesn’t chip. Axes are often thrown at different targets so there’s less chance of a really ugly bounce-back or collisions.

                  There is always someone whose entire job is to watch for anyone or anything getting into the danger zone, and call a halt, and halts are universal and mandatory.

                  Nobody retrieves until everyone has thrown, any weapons that remain but people opted not to throw are put away/down, and the observer has declared the space clear.

                  Nobody lines up to throw until everyone is back and the observer confirms it’s safe.

                  A hand-axe of the throwing kind, especially for beginners, is usually not much bigger than a hammer, not the big kind you’re likely imagining. The target distance is pretty short, a good balance between “not so close a bounce back can hit anyone behind the line” and “not so far you need to use excess force to throw, and risk a less controlled toss.”

      2. MagnaCarta*

        They have been supposedly mandatory places I’ve worked, but also no one has come after me when I skipped them…

    4. Boof*

      I think ideally anything like this goes to an in house or adjacent charity – not because I love raising extra money for work, but at least I know pretty well how well the charity programs we cover work and it’s related to the work we are doing – having work try to rally me for something Completely Different seems, IDK, a little presumptuous plus at great risk of Getting It Wrong if it’s for something the workplace has no real understanding of

      1. Apex Mountain*

        Not sure what you mean by Getting It Wrong, but in the examples I’m familiar with there haven’t been any issues

        1. Lily Rowan*

          Getting It Wrong in corporate volunteering is usually doing a task that is not needed by the nonprofit. I have been a volunteer coordinator at a youth-serving organizations, and companies would want to bring in 50 people to “read to kids.” That’s just a disruption of our model that doesn’t add anything for the kids, just creates a photo op for the company. I have also been a part of a volunteer group that ended up painting a terrible mural because we were supposed to be doing something outside but it rained. We did not help that community center!

    6. AF Vet*

      I love the idea of building bikes for kids! It’s not too difficult (comparable to flat pack furniture, which can value some people by my 10 & 12 year old relish building), you can gather the bikes over the course of a year, etc. Yeah, it’s probably not a skill needed at Widgets & Co, but that doesn’t make it any less valuable. And if you’re in more of an office setting it can feel uniquely powerful to not stare at a computer and get your hands banged up for an afternoon. :)

      1. Phlox*

        Eh as a former bike mechanic – I’ve seen them be hit or miss. There needs to be a lot of quality checking, because boy have I seen front forks on backwards, and poorly tightened/installed stuff.

        1. goddessoftransitory*

          Yeah: this kind of thing sounds good, but I wouldn’t want a kid riding on an unchecked “we meant well!” bike.

    7. Orora*

      I organized one where we went to an escape room. We had to stop a runaway train or something. It wasn’t mandatory but everyone went to it. It was a bit of teambuilding in that each of us had different strengths that we brought to solving the puzzles. Some folks were visual, some were verbal, some were mechanical. We all had to rely on each other to fulfill the objective.

      Then we went for drinks and tacos.

      1. Etcetera*

        Escape rooms with the wrong group of coworkers are the absolute worst. All you need is That One Dude who’s done 20 escape rooms before and gets super condescending about the whole things.

        After the second time he physically grabbed something out of another coworker’s hands, I legitimately though someone might throw a punch.

        1. BellaStella*

          Yeah my team has one of these guys and oddly we did an escape room last year that was super crappy because of it. Also I do not liked being in a room locked in.

        2. Chas*

          Yeah, there’s also the risk that you can end up in one of the more scary ones if the person organising it isn’t careful!

          There’s an Escape room near me that starts with everyone locked in pairs in a row of small cages in the dark (so a lot of the puzzles involve passing things between each other to get out of the cages). It was great fun for me and my friends (who’d done their other rooms already) but not so much for the group of my coworkers who decided to go for to celebrate the birthday of a woman who had claustrophobia!

          (Plus, some of the rooms can have live actors in them to scare you, akin to a haunted house. My friends and I got caught out by that one Halloween where, after being lead into the room and chained to the wall, we all opened our eyes to a guy with a knife screaming at us! My friend group now checks with every Escape room that there will be no live actors in the room before we book, because that was too much for us!)

    8. Roland*

      Yeah, I think that “non-office activity” can be an excellent way to foster better relationships with colleagues, especially when it’s someone I don’t currently interact with as much at work. Ending up next to them at a happy hour or on their team at minigolf can be a great way to jumpstart a better relationship. Like, not parasailing! But there are plenty of more lowkey options. None will be fun to everyone but variation solves that problem.

    9. MigraineMonth*

      I think there’s a difference between “team-building” events (where there is the specific goal of improving teamwork/trust/communication) and more general “offsite activities”.

      The first is part of the job and (at least supposed to be) about improving the team, so there is a heavy expectation that everyone on the team participate. Also, since good teams are generally built over time and the gradual building of trust, almost all the methods of “teambuilding” in a single afternoon are BS.

      I think that offsites–explicitly optional events that are not supposed to serve any business purpose besides raise morale–can be much better. If you rotate through a bunch of different options, focus on including as many people as possible, and budget time for the downtime/celebration, it can be a nice break from work-as-usual. I worked for a company where there was an escape room offsite and a trip to see the Hamilton musical in a nearby city. I didn’t feel any pressure to do it, and I guarantee no actual teambuilding occurred, but it helped the company project a “fun” vibe.

      Offsites can still go badly, of course! A horseback riding or zipline activity where one employee cannot participate because of their weight; a golf outing when none of the female employees play; only having intense hiking outings, where those who attend have greater access to the CEO; and obviously anything having to do with strip clubs are all pitfalls. They just seem like pitfalls that can be avoided with a bit of consideration.

  6. Silicon Valley Girl*

    I feel so lucky that the only such activity that I’ve had to do was learn to juggle. As in, actually juggle small soft balls, taught by some guy brought in. Only a few ppl in the team really picked it up. But the balls made fun toys for my cats afterwards.

  7. I wear my sunglasses at night*

    I don’t know that it’s fair to lump in the “guy stranded in a gully” example with other “I had to go on a corporate retreat and was mildly inconvenienced” scenarios. The former was an annual event that the whole office voluntarily participated in, from what it seems like, and were all experienced hikers. They were in two groups divided by experience level/distance plans and the guy in question was with group A then jumped to Group B (or vice versa). At some point, it became 1 of those “I thought he was with your group, no I thought he was with YOU!” situations.

    I’m summarizing the situation by a lot and I know I’m glossing over a lot of other elements but like, it wasn’t a case of a clueless Michael Scott herding his office onto a bus for a surprise hike and then berating them into marching through the night or whatever. So I don’t know that we can really include it as an example of “UGH corporate retreats, they’re soooooo terrible—-this one almost killed a guy!!!”

    1. Samwise*

      I’m an experienced hiker. Whoever is leading the the two groups AND THE EVENT LEADER need to be counting bodies, checking on physical condition frequently. Especially if you’re doing a 14-er good lord. So even if this guy switched groups, they should have known. Either when he switched (because he said he was going to join the other group) or some reasonable amount of time after he waltzed off to the other group without telling.

      Frankly, they should not have let him switch groups without doing a visual hand-off so to speak. If the group he was with was too slow, he has to get over himself and go slow. If they’re going too fast, someone else in the fast group needs to stay back with him and go slower.

      1. Observer*

        So even if this guy switched groups, they should have known.

        It’s even worse than that, though! They didn’t even realize once they were reconvened at the bottom! And once he texted them, they STILL didn’t do anything, but tell him to go back to the trail head and take the correct trail down. And even when we texted AGAIN that he was having issues, they *STILL* didn’t contact rescue!

        Good Lord! is a bit of an understatement.

    2. Observer*

      The former was an annual event that the whole office voluntarily participated in,

      Maybe it was TRULY voluntary, but maybe not. This is a yearly event that “everyone” does, including people who clearly have no idea what they are doing. So I think that there is a very high likelyhood that at least some people are doing this because they are pressured into it.

      But the main thing that puts this in common with the other stuff is just how little thought went into this. Not only were basic safety protocols ignored, when they were faced with an actual problem, there was no one with any sense to take charge and make sure that the right next steps were taken. It was bad enough that they told him to go back to the head of the trail. But once he told them that he was still disoriented? How on earth was that not an automatic call to rescue services, rather than some more fodder for “team building” as they first did nothing then tried to search by themselves, even though they didn’t have the faintest clue.

      1. blah*

        And maybe it WAS voluntary! What’s the point in wondering whether or not the guy was there because he wanted to be? It doesn’t change the fact that it was poorly managed.

    3. Ellis Bell*

      If they’re experienced hikers, how come they’ve never heard of head counts/buddy systems? You make it sound like the separation of the groups just happened inexplicably TO them and no one could have predicted such a thing, but the reason it happened was because of a very lax planning. There is nothing more predictable than losing people who aren’t being properly accounted for. Honestly I think it’s shamefully clueless.

      1. MigraineMonth*

        Nothing about this read “experienced hikers” to me. At the *very least* someone should have been watching the weather and called S&R as soon as the storm moved in and they lost contact with the hiker. I would expect someone who had never climbed a mountain to figure out he was in significant trouble at that point. Not contacting Search and Rescue until after dark was incredibly poor judgement. That’s what, 7.5 hours he was lost alone on a mountain before anyone called S&R?

        (The lost hiker also should have stopped trying for the descent after he lost contact, but in his defense he might have been disoriented and/or dehydrated and/or hypothermic and not making the best decisions at that point.)

  8. Crystal Claire*

    I’d like to know if anyone has ever quit/rage quit over these disastrous team building activities or afterwards, if they went completely wrong of course. I’m sure there are stories out there.

    1. TheBunny*

      I didn’t rage quit…but I did make up a birthday trip for my husband to get out of one once. Ended up going to visit my parents, went to the fair, and my husband got the funnel cake he wanted.

      It worked out, but can’t lie, the whole thing started as “company wants to do… this thing…on your birthday weekend so we have plans. Don’t know what they are, but we have them.”

      1. Georgia Carolyn Mason*

        I didn’t actually rage quit over my least favorite team-building activity ever, which I’ve mentioned here before: an all-day, mandatory, outdoor scavenger hunt through a large Northeastern city in January with 30ish temps and 10ish windchill, with senior leaders relaxing indoors as “scorekeepers.” Bonus: they created teams of people who had never worked together and never would, so it had no potential for building team cohesion when we were back at work, even in the form of hating a common enemy who gave us frostbite.

        It was the second-to-last straw in my quitting and moving to a warmer climate! (The last one involved climbing over a plowed-in car to get into the office building, because they insisted anyone who could get to the office had to be there after a blizzard.)

    2. RedinSC*

      I don’t know about quitting, but we had 3 people go out on Worker’s Comp injuries after a Team Build softball game.

      1. allathian*

        Serves the company right, IMO. I hope the company learned their lesson.

        I’m very unathletic and I absolutely refuse to exercise in front of my coworkers these days. The most I’ll do is walk fast or jog to get to a meeting I’m nearly late for.

    3. Pizza Rat*

      I came close once, but couldn’t afford to be out of work. I did get out of there as soon as I had something else lined up.

  9. RVA Cat*

    Nothing quite says ableism in the workplace like going into situation where a guy had to saw off his own arm.

      1. Missa Brevis*

        I think they mean hiking – specifically referencing the hiker who got trapped under a boulder on a backcountry solo hike and had to cut off his arm to free himself.

        1. RVA Cat*

          Sorry, I should have mentioned 127 Hours. It was the canyoning where the walls close in. Of course Aron Ralston was *alone* when he was pinned by a boulder and the team-building is in a group with trained guides, but still it’s a physically dangerous activity in a remote area.

  10. A Simple Narwhal*

    Opens article, thinking I know what to expect.

    “Please don’t make me spit soda into my co-worker’s mouth.”

    Oh god what

    1. Successful Birthday Rememberer*

      It will be a cold day in hell before I ever, ever participate in this. I cannot imagine what they were thinking. Can’t they just freaking go to happy hour like everyone else?

      1. Despachito*

        Luckily I didn’t have my mouth full of soda when I read that.

        Otherwise… what the actual, freaking F? How come anyone can have an idea to do this altogether, let alone in a work environment? And how come there is ANYONE willing to participate in that????

    5. HonorBox*

      I’ve been thinking about this more than I care to admit, because gross. And I can’t figure out what the goal or meaning of this would be.

    7. GenX, PhD, Enters the Chat*

      I’m still stunned by that one. Never, I mean, NEVER. I would walk tf OUT if someone asked me to do that. I don’t even think I could stand to watch other people do it. It’s just so gross.

      1. goddessoftransitory*

        It’s absolutely repulsive period, but post COVID? What on earth were they thinking??? Are they three years old?

    10. Another Kristin*

      This one feels like it was someone’s fetish and they conned their coworkers into participating

      2. froodle*

        +2

        there’s a story on here somewhere about a team building thing where everyone took their shoes off, put them in a tub, then other people pulled them out and tried to match them to feet

        100% someone’s fetish thinly (very thinly) disguised as team building

        1. cellbell*

          As someone with the opposite of a foot fetish (an aversion, I guess?), this makes me want to vomit to even consider. Ugh.

          1. froodle*

            I think there’s a very real chance that I would actually cry if I was forced to pick up somebody else’s still warm shoe with my bare hands. Like, actual tears.

          1. Crooked Bird*

            It reminds me of that skit where 6-8 people pretend to brush their teeth using the same cup of water to rinse and the person at the end of the line has a mouthful of tea/coffee they spit into the cup! But that skit is built on obvious pretending (the way we did it, anyway, each person pretends to pass the rinse water to the next person through her ear…)

    12. Ellis Bell*

      See, I can totally imagine people being shy about their health conditions and possibly braving physical challenges that they can’t do… but I find it impossible to imagine people pretending to be okay at spit in their mouths. I would be so comfortable and confident with the word “No” and “No way in hell”. I would not be even slightly embarrassed that I’m not an enthusiastic spit-swallower, so that makes me wonder exactly how punitive and toxic this workplace must have been.

    13. Person from the Resume*

      WTH!

      I think Alison’s articles/posts can’t surprise me anymore, and then they do.

      Mostly as this is so ridiculous and simply illogical (how does this help team building?) versus terribly misguided and dangerous ideas I expected.

  11. noncommittally anonymous*

    My worst, and I think I’ve written about it here before, was the “what was your most embarrassing moment.” ice-breaker. Everyone had to write down their most embarrassing moment, which would then get read aloud, and everyone had to try to match the embarrassing moment to the person. The one who got the most right won.

    I slipped out and didn’t participate. I didn’t want to share my most humiliating moment with my coworkers, and I didn’t really want to hear about theirs. It also took *an hour* away from the actual meat of the meeting, and there were plenty of actual professional issues to discuss.

    I still think my complaint about that was what caused the admin who organized it to move laterally to another division, where she could just do event organization. She was out of place in our crusty, introverted hard-core science division.

    1. Charlotte Lucas*

      I am one of those people who can’t even watch an embarrassing moment in a TV show or movie, and that’s with fictional characters! I would absolutely have to leave also.

      (Granted, I do still love seeing hubris brought to account, so if it were certain people, I would be a willing spectators.)

      1. AF Vet*

        I much prefer schadenfreude to pratfalls. One feels justified… the other almost malicious? Mean-spirited?

    2. pally*

      Ack!
      We had a going away party on a co-worker’s last day.

      The CEO decides to MC this party. He gets up to talk about how we’ll miss this person. Then he asks everyone to relate their most embarrassing story about our soon-to-be-ex co-worker.

      The room fell completely quiet.

      He tried calling on folks individually. Didn’t work.

      What a cluck. Some things just do not ever need to be brought up. Embarrassing moments are one of them.

      1. Juicebox Hero*

        Ugh, way to kill a fun experience that would have allowed the coworker to remember their time at that job fondly. Very glad that none of your coworkers went along with the jerk of a CEO.

    3. Myrin*

      I honestly couldn’t tell you what my most embarrassing moment even was. Part of this is possibly that I’m simply not easily embarrassed but I’m also generally really bad at those “most X situation you’ve ever experienced/said/done/heard of” – you’d think I was born yesterday!

      1. Ellis Bell*

        This is me! I would honestly say “I can’t remember a time I was really embarrassed” and everyone would obviously think it must be a humdinger. Its not that I’ve never been embarrassed, and I definitely get those weird flashbacks of embarrassment on those nights you can’t sleep, like everyone else…. but I genuinely don’t embarrass very easily (I simply don’t care about other people’s opinions very much) and I struggle to come up with a memory in the cold light of day.

      2. Hroethvitnir*

        Yeah, I was thinking about it now and I really don’t know. I hate the suggestion because humiliation is awful, but I do not know what I’d say even if I wanted to answer.

        My brain likes to make me feel painfully mortified over nothing (like physical pain because I… spoke in a meeting and it was fine? Can you not?), but outside of actual dysregulation I can’t think of much.

      3. allathian*

        I’m like this. Sure, I’ve been embarrassed, but I’m not the type of person to wallow in shame. Embarrassment comes and goes, it doesn’t stay in my mind.

        Thankfully I work in a reasonable organization where nobody would even think to ask a question as stupid as this.

    4. A Simple Narwhal*

      A small company I used to work for made all new hires tell an embarrassing story about themselves in their intro staff meeting. It was meant to be a fun, get-to-know you bit to break up a standard semi-boring meeting. Most people told cute funny stories, ones like talking about pants in the UK when you meant trousers and everyone was confused as to why you were talking about underwear, or participating in a juggler’s street show and accidentally taking out the juggler when tossing their club back to them in front of a large crowd. Not my favorite since I get major second-and embarrassment, but not a huge deal since it was mostly silly and harmless.

      Except no one told a new intern that it was supposed to be light-hearted. He ended up telling this really long and uncomfortable story about going into a bar one night in another country and thinking he just had major game when it turns out he went into a hostess bar where you essentially pay to hangout and drink with pretty women (and potentially take them home). I’ll let you fill in the other details (and he provided a LOT of them) but long story short, the embarrassing story part of intros was quietly cancelled moving forward.

    5. Slow Gin Lizz*

      Now, see, if the same sort of idea were used in a positive manner, that would be a great icebreaker. So, for instance, have everyone write down their favorite book or movie or the most fun thing they ever did in their PTO or something and then everyone guess who wrote what, that could be really neat. But why bring up anyone’s embarrassing past? That’s just so cringe.

      1. Chas*

        Yes, something vague like “Tell us about something you enjoyed recently”, or “What’s something you’re looking forward to?” would tell me a lot more about a person and what I could potentially have a friendly conversation with them about than some embarrassing story they’d probably rather I never mention ever again would.

    6. Elizabeth West*

      I would just make up a thing and make it as outlandish as possible. It would end something like, “And that is how I got Queen Elizabeth to block me on social media.”

      1. Azure Jane Lunatic*

        Ooo! Pro tip: the term “bloodcannon” can squick some of the most unsquickable people I’ve ever met.

        (Non-binary, with PCOS and endometrial cancer. Recently got my hair back post-chemo!)

    8. I Have RBF*

      They had this type of this as a “introduction” bit at one startup I worked at. Yes, mandatory. It was very indicative of the culture. I didn’t fit well into a bunch of extroverts and masochists.

  12. Perihelion*

    Team-building should be very simple: management provides free food and then leaves the employees alone to eat and hang.

    2. JadedAmber*

      That’s what my current company does! They hire an ice cream truck for the afternoon a couple of times in the summer. Best team building I can think of (there are all kinds of options for ppl with allergies/intolerances)

    4. Always Tired*

      We do paintball, and make all the management play at least one round. It wouldn’t work for every office, but we’re a physical industry so everyone is able bodied. I have absolutely received purposeful friendly fire, but that’s the danger of being HR, I suppose. It is the most looked forward to day of the year.

  13. Artemesia*

    I can’t believe anyone does any extreme or dangerous team building activity after 5 American executives were killed in a white water rafting accident in Canada about 30 years ago — the FIL of a friend of mine was on the trip but luckily didn’t die when a dozen people were in a raft that flipped in extreme rapids conditions and 5 of them died.

    We can all survive laughing at the soda example (yikes) or remember with horror the ‘what you don’t like about your co-workers’ event — but leaving people in the mountains or killing them in rafts, yeah no.

    There was a lot of honest encounter and personal psychological exposure stuff in the 70s — I thought we were past thinking that was a good idea.

    3. Chauncy Gardener*

      I literally had a “discussion” three years ago with a manager about why we were not going to allow him to do white water rafting for his team building exercise.
      I didn’t actually ask him “WTF dude??” but I’m sure it came through loud and clear.

    5. Ellis Bell*

      The bar is so much higher for workplaces, because of the inherent pressure. If a friend or social group proposes an extreme activity that you’re unfamiliar with/physically limited with you would just tell them to stuff it. If you kind of like the idea but think that guides or people running the experience seem to be dodgy, you can say no or ask the friends to research someone better with a proven safety record. At work, not only are there consequences for opting out it’s usually been organised by someone else and you’re completely in their hands.

  14. SomethingCleverHere*

    There was an office secretary who used to post here about some of her team building activities. They were all so juvenile and I was embarrassed for her. A talent show, coloring paper turkeys? She even decided she would call people at home during the pandemic and check into their personal lives. Just…..leave people alone to do their work.

      1. Radioactive Cyborg Llama*

        I had a Very Difficult Time in my life about 15 years ago and coloring was such a lifesaver for me. It takes no energy but gave me something to focus on and a little bit of meditative/creative quality. Godsend.

        1. Ellis Bell*

          So, in my experience the non perilous team building stuff involves sitting still and listening intently to some corporate guru jibber jabber which is a chaos situation for my ADHD mind because I’m not actually doing anything for eons of time. There’s a real danger of my mind just turning OFF and me sitting there like a vacant eyed shell, drooling. A spot of colouring in would actually suit me nicely. I’d enjoy it and because my hands are busy it keeps me in the same realm of reality as everyone else.

          1. Elizabeth West*

            When Exjob forced us to do the DiSC assessment, I finished one of the quizzes ahead of time, flipped the paper over, and drew a picture of a pirate cat in a little boat with a bottle of whiskey. The picture hung on the wall of my cubicle for the rest of my tenure there. I might still have it somewhere.

            This is what happens when you leave me idle with crayons. :)

          2. Azure Jane Lunatic*

            The corporate team building stuff I was involved in planning was an internal specialty conference that brought together a bunch of usually siloed people in the same discipline, with presentations from people in the group as well as I think one or two Corporate Gurus when they got more budget.

            One of the (hotly debated) items in the entertainment part of the budget was the mandatory fidget toy. One year it was Legos, basic bricks in a bunch of colors, enough for everybody to have about 10. Another year it was colored Silly Putty, and people made designs with them and the post-conference roundup included pictures of some of the truly amazing ones. I don’t remember the third year, but I started a tradition of handing out miniature slide whistles or recorders to the organization team. It unexpectedly helped us get everyone back into their seats after lunch: nobody was really listening and everyone was having fearfully important hallway conversations, but a few toots cleared the hall like magic. (If you can’t trust someone with a slide whistle, you might consider whether you can trust them with helping herd cats, even though those are two different arenas of trustworthiness, but they both involve good judgment.)

      3. SomethingCleverHere*

        Sure. I guess it could be cute. But when the admin is coming around and telling you you HAVE to participate? And then she makes people participate in an embarrassing mandatory talent show? And then she starts calling you at home to get information on your personal life? Is that actually building a team? Maybe uniting people against the secretary.

        1. Handprint Turkey*

          Yikes this seems so unnecessarily mean? If you don’t like team building fine, but calling out a fellow commenter here so harshly over what seems like pretty innocuous stuff that very likely was coming from above her head feels uncalled for.

          Also, your use of “secretary” seems extremely pointed in an icky way.

        2. Zebra*

          Telling people they have to participate isn’t cool; it should be up to people if they want to take part. Especially a talent show.

          But the pandemic was pretty frightening. Early on, we had no idea what to expect, and for a lot of people, it felt weird working from home. I dunno what “get information on your personal life” means…but if she’s just asking how you or your loved ones are doing, that just seems like a generally human impulse.

          1. Vimto*

            My partner was overseas visiting her family (we live in London, neither of us are from the UK) when the pandemic started – she didn’t come back home until early May. So I was alone, doing okay, but definitely feeling lonely. One day a person I was friendly with at work, but not especially close to gave me a call – we chatted for abut ten minutes until I awkwardly said ‘do you need help wth a ticket or…’ and she said, ‘no, I just wanted to see how you were doing because I would be spinning out of I were on my own’ and maybe that’s over-familiar but it was just the nicest possible thing I could have heard then.
            I’m a worrier, and an overthinker, and I wouldn’t ever have reached out to her in the same way, but I’m so glad she did

    2. RagingADHD*

      *Gasp* you mean, during an unprecedented crisis when people were experiencing extreme isolation and there was a secondary epidemic of depression and other mental health problems, someone thought it would be good to call and check on their coworkers to let them know someone gave a shit whether they lived or died?

      What a monster. How dare she.

      1. Zebra*

        Yeah, I think I’d prefer working with someone who phones me to say hi over someone quietly rolling their eyes because my team-building exercise was dorky.

    3. Nancy*

      Those sound harmless and fun, and as long as they are optional who care, really?

      And that’s really nice that they were willing to check on coworkers. Many people struggled during the pandemic, and having someone check in occasionally to acknowledge their existence made a huge difference.

    4. Anon for this comment*

      Hi! I’m the admin whose team building activities you’ve apparently been hung up on for years (search “SomethingCleverHere” on the post “What’s the smallest amount of power you’ve ever seen someone abuse”)

      I wanted to let you know that the talent show you keep deriding raised $10,000 for leukemia, and is still fondly remembered several years later.

      Your repeated ribbing of a random commenter on an anonymous website is absolutely pathetic, especially considering how much space I’ve apparently taken up in your head—for years. Be better. Cheers!

      2. Tobias Funke*

        You are a hero, both for your fundraiser and for coming back to remind this clown about the people here actually being real.

  15. soontoberetired*

    Someone was talking about team building activities again at work (and thank the powers that be we don’t get forced into these anymore) and wanted something. My response was we build teams actually working on stuff together at work. the great thing about them cutting the budget on a bunch of stuff is this stuff was also cut. I managed to avoid the physical challenge one they had years ago. We were scheduled after some other groups, but that those other events didn’t go well (people got hurt!), and they were all cancelled.

  16. Sunflower*

    Thank goodness I’ve never had to do anything physical for teambuilding, but as a person who suffered from childhood bullying all though out school from 9-18 years old, it’s difficult revealing even innocent questions like “what’s your favorite movie.” I keep expecting my answers to be mocked even though my head knows they won’t be in a work environment with adults. At least not openly.

    1. Resume please*

      Same, I really hate that stuff. Also, I have no idea what my favorite movie is.

      That said, the dolphin visualization one would have been hysterically funny for me

    2. Aeryn Sun*

      Same, I once was at a retreat in school where people were apologizing for stuff and I was expected to hug and accept apologies from people who had made fun of me behind my back for years. Since then I’ve always had a “what if people are mocking me behind my back again?” thing and even simple get to know you stuff feels weird to reveal.

      I also have a lot of niche interests so if that comes up I have to be like “am I going to be honest or come up with a safe answer that won’t get any questions?” because no I don’t want to explain Japan’s underground pop music scene to a coworker just because “what kind of music do you like?” was the question.

      1. Sunflower*

        Yes! I have lied several times with safe answers. I will never admit that I read fanfiction to real life people, especially at a corporate setting.

        1. allathian*

          I’ll probably never admit that I (used to) write fanficition, albeit stuff I never published except in RPBEMs (role-play by email, is that still a thing?), at work. The only person at work I ever told got an original urban fantasy short story published in an anthology. I felt comfortable sharing my geeky hobby with her because she was very open about her geeky hobbies, like running LARPs, and being one of the main organizers of a fairly large role-playing convention. She told me that her volunteer gig pretty much sealed the deal on her getting the job with us, she used to be our events organizer.

      2. Grizabella the Glamour Cat*

        I hear you. I’ve been in the position of trying to explain J rock to someone who was totally unfamiliar with any aspect of Japanese popular culture, and they just could not grasp it, even when I said it’s basically just rock music only they’re singing in Japanese (with maybe a little English sprinkled in once in a while). Rock music + Japanese just does not compute for some people! 8-D

        1. I Have RBF*

          I guess I don’t see what is so incomprehensible about that – rock music in Japanese with maybe some traditional Japanese riffs. Then again, one of the things we listen around here is Mongolian metal.

      3. Paint N Drip*

        thank you for validating me hiding my weirder interests lol
        I actually don’t want to talk about my real self with you, so I spent my weekend…. relaxing :)

  17. Project Maniac-ger*

    Extreme team-building feels like the same phenomenon of “we’re family here.” Most of us don’t need to be that close with our coworkers or “bond” with them. We need to be communicative and respectful, but that’s created in day-to-day culture not rock climbing.

    I’ve been on a few trips with folks I don’t know well and I lost respect for some of them – I wish I didn’t see what they did or heard what they said. When boundaries come down, it’s FAFO.

  18. VERY ANON*

    Had a team building experience once that was a disaster. We participated in a somewhat athletic activity that went really well. We had a lot of fun. But there was some beer. One person had a bit too much… shockingly. At the end of things, we had a little chit chat and the boozed up coworker somehow took great offense at everyone’s belief that her work was not as meaningful to the business as the work others did. Reader, no one said anything that prompted this outburst. Nothing! She also complained about aspects of her appearance – things for which she had full control – and ended up crying. My boss also ended up crying because he felt like somehow his own actions or inactions had made her feel inadequate. I got home and spent hours on the phone with each of my coworkers and my boss trying to mend fences and mediate. A good afternoon spoiled….

  19. Festively Dressed Earl*

    Well, if that team-building hike was meant to expose communication issues within the workplace, it was a smashing success. I can’t help wondering if that poor guy started job hunting after he left the hospital.

    1. Meep*

      Imma going to be blunt and say I have a feeling if 14 people are unconcerned that you got lost, you might be the problem.

      It sounds like he went ahead of the group and then when he realized he went the wrong way, he called for help only to find everyone else was already down (ergo why the trail markers were removed).

      He definitely should be looking for a new job, though. Maybe some remote work where he doesn’t have to work with others.

      1. Ellis Bell*

        Mmm.. please tell me you don’t organise safety situations for large groups. It’s completely irresponsible to make inexperienced people go hiking and then tell them that it’s on them to keep themselves safe.

      2. Cheap ass rolling with it*

        My impression was it was a bystander effect with no leader to say “we need to help our coworker”.

        “if 14 people are unconcerned that you got lost, you might be the problem.”

        Whether or not he was liked as a colleague does not mean that his life should be put in danger. If he was unliked, the professional way to deal with it through a PIP, not endangering his life.

      3. Festively Dressed Earl*

        I was thinking more that a cascading cluster of communication catastrophes like this makes for a lousy workplace, not that an unpopular coworker should be exposed on a mountainside like an unwanted Spartan child. Now I’m trying to think if there are any bad coworkers/bosses in the AAM archives who’d warrant being stranded on a mountain, and I’m coming up blank.

  20. Grandma*

    These “team building” activities can have all sorts of unintended consequences. When my son outgrew Cub Scouts and was ready to move on to Boy Scouts, he didn’t know any of the boys in the new troop. The troop leaders thought some “team building,” particularly trust falls and the like, were a good idea for the first meeting. My son had both trust issues and coordination issues. He took one look at falling backwards and believing the guys would keep him safe, and he said “no.” He knew he couldn’t fall backwards in a flat fall (proprioceptive issues) and he’d had some “Lucy pulls away the football before Charlie Brown kicks it” experiences. He walked away and never was a Boy Scout. More adults should take a cue from the kid who had the guts to say “no” when they know this is not an activity that is safe and/or possible for them.

    1. WantonSeedStitch*

      I think that can be hard to do for someone who is afraid they might lose their job, directly or indirectly, as a result of saying no–especially for someone whose healthcare is tied to their job.

    2. Love to WFH*

      A friend’s employer sent their group to a team building exercise. One of the first things was a trust fall. The person fell backwards, and the (adults!) all flinched backwards and didn’t catch them.

      They weren’t injured, but the consultant turned grey, and cancelled the rest of the event.

      1. I Have RBF*

        If I fall and am not caught, it becomes a three ring circus for me to stand up again, and I often end up hurt by well meaning bystanders who think that they know better than I do on what it takes to stand me up.

    3. A Cat named Brian*

      My son is an Eagle Scout, my daughter was in venture crew and I was a Venture crew advisor (leader). In all my time in scouts we never did this. How awful! We had team building by camping, fishing and canoeing. So sorry that happened to your son.

      1. allathian*

        Yeah, the scouting experience really depends a lot on the parents and older kids involved. (In my area at least, older kids help run events for younger kids with adults.)

    4. Coffee*

      I am usually among tallest and thus heavier people in any group. Person ordered to catch me would get crushed!

  21. Justin*

    We had a company offsite last week and I surprisingly enjoyed the team building activity, which was silly, but it was acknowledged to be silly (and it was only 90 minutes out of a 3 day trip). But it was one activity amongst a lot of meetings, parties/dancing, meals, and awards. (The meetings were mandatory.)

    But then we’re ranked the number two nonprofit to work for so it makes sense we’d manage to do it well.

      1. Justin*

        We had to, as about 200 people split into 23 teams (350 person company, so hadn’t attended the whole thing or opted out), build a 23 section bridge out of cardboard and tape and a bunch of regulations. I was rolling my eyes hard, but, they were clear that ability levels weren’t an issue (there were roles for people who needed to sit or do things differently), and the big big thing was the host/emcee was really great.

        It sounds awful. I was going to skip it and, like, drink champagne, but I went and I had a really fun time.

        The main point of our offsite is to break down siloes and have us work with other teams and it accomplished that goal.

          1. Justin*

            It is, but the company is national so this is more or less the only time many of us see each other at all outside of zoom boxes. I flew cross-country, etc. So if it’s shorter than that, you’re just a zombie the whole time.

            1. Justin*

              In fact when the company merged in 2022, it was only two days (really a day and a half) and everyone said “yo this was really hard on me.” So they listened.

  22. Despachito*

    I remember reading an article about the event you are probably referring to, and when I saw the title, I thought “poor man, what a bunch of inconsiderate AHs”.

    However, when I actually read the article, I understood that this one person (a manager so not a peer but rather a higher-up to at least some of the members of the group) decided to leave the group returning to the base and reach the summit single-handedly instead. Which is in my book a completely different situation than “he lagged behind and they left him in the lurch”.

    What are the coworkers supposed to do in this situation? They clearly did not opt for the best solution because letting him return on his own could cost him his life, but what were their other options? Trying to persuade him it is not a good idea to do solo feats mainly because of the risk but also because they were there for a supposed TEAMbuilding, not proving individual points? But how do you say that if the person is your superior?

    Or waiting for him to return from the summit, gritting their teeth and thinking “he is as dumb as he is entitled but we can’t leave him here because he might die?”

    Neither of those three solution seem to contribute to the real TEAM spirit the teambuilding is supposed to reinforce somehow.

    1. Ellis Bell*

      It’s not necessarily the individual coworkers who are to blame, but the person who organised the trip overall. It sounds like there were no basic safety instructions as part of the hike, no high visibility wear given out, or experienced guides who would have done things like headcounts, buddy systems and instructing people on what to do if they get lost, or suspect people are lost. So, the guide would absolutely have banned someone from wandering off. Even if the colleague still persisted in getting lost he/the guide should have called mountain rescue as soon as he was off trail or as soon as a dedicated headcount time had been and gone. They didn’t call anyone till it was too late to find him, and that’s an organisational failure.

    2. Everlast*

      Initial confusion aside, when he called to tell them he was lost they told him to keep trying and did not assist him further or alert rescue that he was lost. Meanwhile it got stormy and cold, they knew he was wandering away from last known location, and it could be presumed his cell phone did not have unlimited battery.

  24. WantonSeedStitch*

    My department at work tends to do either pure socializing (which pretty much everyone likes! We eat, drink, and chat, and everyone gets along well) or strictly work-focused stuff that takes us out of our usual groupings and work subjects. That can actually be fun: we might hear a presentation on something related to overall strategic goals, for example, and then be broken into small groups to discuss how our own team or we ourselves might contribute to those goals or how they might affect us. Sometimes this gets us thinking about how something outside our usual day-to-day work might actually have an impact on us, and talking about that impact is educational for the people who are directly involved in that work. Plus, it ensures we don’t get too cliquey, as we are generally put into very diverse groups, and that gives us an opportunity to get to know people better.

  25. NobodyHasTimeForThis*

    My small team does an event each year and we kind of vote on it and its usually tolerable. Mostly involves a lot of food.

    My larger corporate team building has an entire day set aside each year and there are a variety of activities and a lot of people seem to enjoy them. I have left early each year. It is always on my scheduled WFH day. They do tend to have a lot of variety though. It is more staff appreciation than team building.

  26. Unkempt Flatware*

    I think I’ve posted here before about the times before when I was an elementary school teacher. We had to do an activity where we paired up, took off our shoes and socks (!), stood toe to toe, interlaced our fingers, and had to see who could touch the other’s feet with our bare feet. Like a weird wrestling match. I still have not recovered.

    1. Charlotte Lucas*

      If you were standing toe to toe, weren’t your feet already touching? I think I’m missing something.

      I’d be out once they wanted my shoes off. And I don’t interlace fingers with any of my coworkers.

      1. Unkempt Flatware*

        Think of it like a thumb war or thumb wrestling. We had to try to keep the top of our feet from being touched by our partner’s toes while trying to touch the top of our partner’s feet with our toes.

        1. Charlotte Lucas*

          Got it!

          Why not just thumb wrestle? (That still would make no sense, but at least it’s not as gross. And everyone gets to keep their shoes on.)

          1. Unkempt Flatware*

            Seriously!? I still am not sure what that accomplished. Or better yet, let the poor overworked teachers go back to their rooms for real work!

            1. Georgia Carolyn Mason*

              Mostly what I am learning here is that many people have waaaaay more tolerance for interacting with other people’s bodies than I do. Toe wars! Soda spitting! At work! <<<>>>

                1. Unkempt Flatware*

                  Well it worked because I imagined the brackets were how tight you had to squeeze your eyes shut to block out the BS.

    2. Pam Adams*

      I have neuropathy- I wouldn’t know if our feet were touching.

      However, since I also have surgically repaired weird feet, I would probably gross out my ‘partner’ enough to win automatically.

    3. froodle*

      Unkempt Flatware, my jaw DROPPED reading this. Touching my co-workers bare feet with my own bare feet? Absolutely not. I swear a bit of my soul broke off and floated away just thinking about it.

    4. goddessoftransitory*

      WTAH is it with these team building things and weird foot fetishists inflicting their thing onto random employees?

  27. Girl So Confusing*

    On this topic.. I’m the event planner in my office and all of our team-building events are truly optional. We rotate through events: bowling night, going to the movies, attending a pro baseball game, easy nature hike, etc. I’m hoping this November to do a volunteer day at the local food bank. Different types of events attract different folks, because everyone has different interests, energy levels, and abilities. Attendance isn’t tracked and nobody is punished for not attending, but I would hazard to guess that every single employee attends at least one a year (baseball game being the most popular, bowling being the second). I know it’s an unpopular topic on this blog, but I get really positive feedback from attendees and I enjoy planning them, and I think team building/corporate events can be done well and to great effect, but they must be truly optional and must offer variety.

      1. Charlotte Lucas*

        I am all for informal, optional relationship building like described here. It’s the team “building” nonsense activities that are done in mandatory meetings that inspire me to roll my eyes.

        Your first question should always be what you are trying to accomplish with said activity. I’m not sure if everyone who thinks up these things has a good, solid answer for that.

        1. Roland*

          They already gave a great answer – people enjoy it. That’s good for a company.

          Girl So Confusing, I always enjoyed this kind of optional activity at my job that had a lot of them. But yes this is a bad forum to ask for suggestions in!

        3. Girl So Confusing*

          My company is really segmented into departments, some overlap, other’s don’t, some are creative, some are analytical, etc., so our goal is just to get different people mingling with each other and getting to know one another outside of one’s direct coworkers. It’s been really fabulous and has worked really well! It just makes the vibe really more pleasant, especially for a few of our lesser-seen folks (IT, accounting) and our shyer employees, who have really found these types of events helpful to get to know more people and feel more comfortable. But we’re eating hotdogs and cheering for the same baseball team with each other, not being forced to share embarrassing stories.

      2. acmx*

        Agree with you on the audience here. It was refreshing to see you/your company had a successful one. My company does them and my department does and I’d most people are accepting of them.

    2. Georgia Carolyn Mason*

      These sound good! Optional, chill, and unlikely to end with a visit from ski patrol/mountain rescue/EMTs/etc. I’m sure some people hate all activities (guessing most have/had coworkers who have made them feel like spending even one additional second together would make them tear out their hair), but if you’re gonna do these, yours are fine.

    3. Nancy*

      This is how it has been done at every organization I’ve worked for. Always a variety and always optional. They pretty much all include either lunch or dinner, so it’s easy to skip the baseball game, for example, but attend the free meal. Even the day long ones are always ‘choose which parts you want to do.’

    4. Media Monkey*

      everywhere i have worked has non-mandatory social activities like this. i used to help organise and we had a list of mixed up activities that involved worked for different people – a mix of crazy golf, korean bingo, sip and paint/ art classes, scavenger hunts, foozball, darts, shuffleboard, escape rooms, cocktail making etc etc. helps that we are in london and you can find just about anything to do here! all completely optional.

    5. I Have RBF*

      … but they must be truly optional and must offer variety.

      This, plus the fact that they need to avoid junk science and woo-woo psychology.

      Variety means that there is usually something for everyone, “optional” means that people can pick what they enjoy.

      I am disabled. I would still try bowling, because it’s a challenge, but not hiking or running. Kayaking was difficult, but people actually helped me get into and out of the kayak.

  28. HailRobonia*

    Manager: “I’m organizing a team-building event you can all get a sense of community.”
    Me: “We already have a sense of community… we all share a hatred of our incompetent man….. uh, manatee. Yeah, our incompetent manatee.”

      1. Hroethvitnir*

        I like that a lot! Variants of Fenris-wolf have been my user name online for 25 years, but the first time an alternative has appealed to me is when Reddit suggested Objective [Animal].

        I changed the animal and now use variants whenever I can’t have something Fenrir related.

        I kind of want to use Incompetent Manatee somewhere.

  29. Icantdance*

    O good grief! These stories give me hives. They bring back awful memories of the time I worked for a company based in Europe that is highly competitive. Everything we did had to be a strenuous physical activity – even going to a team dinner in the evening! Oh, we can’t take the train or a car – no, we all have to walk 15 miles through city traffic to get to the restaurant. I have a spinal condition and I simply could not do that. I was ridiculed and ostracized. Awful people.

    3. I Have RBF*

      rage

      I would not have been able to do that. I’m doing good if I can walk three blocks. 15 miles would be straight out, and I would have griped to HR about the sheer level of discriminatory ableism.

      What a pack of jackals.

  30. Lorax*

    I once had a job that did a multi-day, overnight orienteering event as the initial team building event at the start of every year. To be fair, camping and outdoorsy work was involved in the normal course of business for 50% of the new employees… but ONLY 50%. The other 50% had office-based positions that had nothing to do with the outdoors, and I’ve always wondered what kind of trauma they suffered being dropped in the middle of the woods with strangers, no cell reception, and only enough food for two days.

    1. o_gal*

      That’s not what orienteering is. That’s a survival course. Orienteering has a defined start and finish point, you have a map and compass, and you can short or long courses. And it takes place in areas that are part of civilization. Definitely not an activity where you drop someone in the wilderness without any resources to help them get out.

  31. An Australian in London*

    FYI re. stranded hiker:

    Per the article in the Guardian on this (“Colorado man left behind during office retreat survives night on mountain”) this was not an issue of two groups each of whom thought he was with the other.

    Others in the group ahead of him removed items marking the correct descent as they went. Everyone was aware he was stuck up there on his own – he twice dropped a pin on a map on his phone and the others told him he was in the wrong place and he needed to get back up to the top before he could then descend safely.

    They lost touch with him around 4pm while severe weather rolled in. They only reported him lost to authorities 5 hours later.

    Every single one of them knew he was on his own, lost (because of their actions in removing trail markers), and left him on his own for hours.

    A good prosecutor has everything they need to make out attempted murder for this. I hope there are both criminal charges and a civil suit against both the company and all of the individuals who left him to die.

    2. Charlotte Lucas*

      And if the trail markers were out there by the park service, there could be some extra fines for removing those. (I have 0 patience for people who mess with public parks.)

    3. Myrin*

      I read the part about them removing the markings and I’m still not sure why on earth they did that, knowing there was still someone behind them who would need them.

      1. Observer*

        Removing the markings was the least of it.

        He twice contacted them – the second time telling them that he couldn’t figure out where to go. Then they totally lost contact, but they waited *5 hours* to contact rescue service – well after darkness, even though there was a storm in the area!

        The markers was stupid. The rest was egregiously and dangerously stupid (to be kind) and seems to have all been done in service of posturing and performing team-building and wilderness hardiness. (The fact that they ostensibly tried searching for him themselves doesn’t change that – it merely strengthens that, to me.)

        1. Strive to Excel*

          What I really want to know is what level of hiking experience any of these people had. I looked up the trail, and it’s not an easy one – 4,500 ft of elevation over 9.5 miles. But good gracious, it feels like these yahoos just started walking without actually bothering to understand a single second of the potential risks, and I include all 15 of them in that, because they really did everything wrong.

        2. Ellis Bell*

          The very first thing the mountain rescue people tell you not to do is attempt your own rescue! You are just giving the teams more clueless people to potentially have to search for.

    4. Mark This Confidential And Leave It Laying Around*

      Yeah, I read that article. Obviously no one likes the guy, but still: the way he was treated was indeed criminal.

    5. Strive to Excel*

      The two groups were in the wrong. They should have told him to sit tight and gone back after him immediately or called emergency services. Though FWIW the article describes them as “removing belongings left to mark a boulder field” which doesn’t sound like removing trail markers and more like removing pieces of clothing/water bottles or something similar.

      But frankly I’m wondering how experienced any of these people are at hiking.

      1. The FIRST rule of getting lost when hiking is to sit tight, stop moving, and let people know where you are. You should only move if you’re about to be in physical danger and need to get to shelter. This got drummed into me the last time I did any sort of safety training. They recommended carrying a whistle with you at all times for maximum efficacy and minimal effort.

      2. Never split the party. No idea how that went down.

      3. It should not have taken hours for them to notice he was missing.

      4. Once he first said he was lost, they should have told him to sit tight and either gone back for him or contacted emergency services immediately.

      5. They DEFINITELY should have contacted emergency services as soon as the strong weather rolled in.

      6. No one should be wearing all black in a hike in the fall. This is a bad idea anywhere, but especially in the woods in fall where hunters can also get lost. The only worst thing to wear would be brown.

      7. He could also have contacted emergency services (though he was by the sound of it lost, injured, and dehydrated, so it makes sense that he wouldn’t have thought it through).

      All of which goes to show that strenuous physical activities requiring physical skill and a certain level of survival training are terrible, terrible choices for an “office teambuilding” event.

      1. Bruce*

        I was on a big college backpacking trip split into groups, one of the other groups lost a guy by getting too spread out. We wound up backtracking to help with the search. He was found by a passing doctor after 2 days and 2 nights of searching, he had a broken leg from falling down a cliff but recovered completely. Really drove home for me how important it is to keep the group together, especially in poorly marked trails like open granite slopes.

      2. I Have RBF*

        6. No one should be wearing all black in a hike in the fall. This is a bad idea anywhere, but especially in the woods in fall where hunters can also get lost. The only worst thing to wear would be brown.

        I disagree with the last. The very worst thing to wear when hiking in the fall is fall camo (browns, rust, and tan) with no hi-vis.

    6. Despachito*

      I understood it as the trail markers were their possessions and they just took them back.

      Also shouldn’t they have had an experienced guide? I can’t imagine letting a bunch of people not used to hike in the mountains go there alone?

  32. Granola baby*

    Somehow it took me multiple team building events before I realized that I was doing them wrong.
    Turns out when you give me a task, I am too task oriented for social interaction. Make fleece blankets ? Sure here’s 30 – churn them out like a machine. Assemble care kits? Set up an assembly line. Paint a halfway house kitchen? Show up a day before to test the existing paint (so that we aren’t putting latex over oil or vice versa) and mask off the trim. Play a game? Hah, I managed to ruin that too –figured out the end goal and ended the game 30 minutes early (goal was to trade resources with other teams so that everyone had a certain amount. Figured it out after the 1st round, used the 2nd to pressure other teams to trade with lesser teams. Parity reached on round 3. Found out later it was supposed to go to 7 rounds).

    I don’t participate in team events any more.

    1. PleaseNo*

      I think the point of team events is to become a better team, not necessarily to do the tasks. self-selecting out does not accomplished that goal either

    2. DawnShadow*

      You may not be good at team building events but man! I would want you on my team at work! Who wouldn’t want to work with someone who is actually good at getting the job done!

      1. Paint N Drip*

        Not a good team build experience but a fairly good internal interview! I’d also want a person like this on my team

  33. C4TL4DY*

    There wasn’t anything helpful in the article or any suggestions for better team building. It just said not to do them lol OK

    1. Charlotte Lucas*

      I think Alison does a good job pointing out that the best team building doesn’t use gimmicks but is when a group of coworkers is able to come together to accomplish actual work goals successfully.

    2. Mark This Confidential And Leave It Laying Around*

      That IS the helpful suggestion: stop doing “team building.”

    4. ReallyBadPerson*

      That’s because team building activities that are so far removed from your normal job aren’t likely to be successful. If you want to build a team, give them the resources they need to do their actual teapot painting. Don’t send them bungee jumping.

    5. basically functional*

      Did you not read this part?

      “The most effective team building comes from teams grappling with real-life challenges in the normal course of working together, and doing so collaboratively and respectfully, with opportunities for meaningful input.”

  34. RagingADHD*

    I’ve been to 3 teambuilding activities at the company I started with this year, one for the whole department and two for our group within the department.

    1) Very nice catered lunch at the group manager’s house, followed by a discussion of our strengths / skills test results and how they fit together for us as a team. He was going to have us sit by the pool (or swim if we wanted to), but it was raining so we stayed inside. I didn’t come dressed to swim, and I don’t think anyone else did either.

    2) Very nice catered lunch for the whole department, followed by an optional game of cornhole. Winners got a cheer and bragging rights. I didn’t play, but I watched for a while and then wandered off, as a number of people seemed to do.

    3) An afternoon outing for the group (on company time) to a nearby craft store, where we got to choose a piece of pottery to paint, and just sat around the table chatting. According to our group admin, this was supposed to challenge our creativity, but it was really just a relaxing hangout.

    I wouldn’t say any of them were major breakthroughs for our personal growth or team cohesion, but our team is already pretty cohesive, and the activities were pretty fun in a low-key way. Our company has a very wide mix of ages, life stages, family structures, and ability levels, so while they do push engagement and participation in group activities, the activities themselves are quite chill. I don’t think anyone but a few hardcore “cruise-director” types really love them, but nobody seems to hate them.

    1. Allonge*

      I think that all sounds great and in general, it would be a major mistake to expect any team-building exercise to be a major breakthrough in anything. As always, it’s a process, and 99.999% of the process takes place in daily work even if an org has very regular team events.

      1. RagingADHD*

        Yes, I think the whole idea that team building should be dramatic or epic is very misguided, because that’s not how healthy relationships in healthy circumstances are built. I was pointing out the contrast.

  36. Nilsson Schmilsson*

    Years ago, my company was navigating ISO registration and decided on a team building event for buy in for all supervisors and managers. One exercise involved giving us a written list of things, where we had to rank the importance of this things for a specific scenario. There was so much disagreement about the correct order of the answers, that we didn’t do anything else and never got together again. Oh and for the record, I got the most in the correct order and was promptly deemed a cheater.

  37. JPalmer*

    The sporty manager seems super ableist in a way that she didn’t recognize.

    Like she found her joy through her health, but that’s not a path everyone can follow (I say this as a pretty able and active individual). What’s worse is that that manager saw fit to try and punish anyone who didn’t charge into a physical regime to claim their happiness, either ignorant or unwilling to accept that not everyone can.

    What a lousy manager.

  39. Count von tshirt's phone*

    we just had an office wide “mandatory fun afternoon” – lunch , games, petting zoo. (yes, a petting zoo. it was odd)
    three days later, I’m home with a stuffy nose and blazing fever. I’m not the only one.
    honestly, if you want to improve moral, give us the afternoon off to do what we want , a gift card for lunch or anything other than this.

  40. Forgot my name again*

    Team building exercises and keynote speakers are two things I hate the most about corporate get togethers

    1. Bruce*

      Douglas Adams gave a keynote at Java-One in the early 90s, that was the best thing about that 2 days spent in a convention center. But I’ll grant you that getting the author of the Hitchhikers Guide to give a keynote is a pretty high bar for most corporate events…

      1. I Have RBF*

        Having been to several industry conventions, I have seldom seen any really good keynotes. Most are just some CEO and marketing dweebs waxing lyrical about their newest gizmo or service. Nothing life changing for me. The better ones are just generally good speakers, but they are really few and far between.

  41. froodle*

    I was working in a call centre (absolute hotbeds of ridiculous workplace behaviour I. general)

    the new team lead/supervisor had put together a “getting to know each other” questionnaire about ourselves and each other for all of us to complete

    (while on the phones? and then give to her? dunno how that was going to work, but again, call centre)

    one of the questions was, I kid you not, “who on the team would you want to fight?”

    I looked at it, looked at it again,and popped it under my keyboard while opting to speak to customers rather than participate

    couple of hours later, an email comes round telling us to disregard it.

    I’d say I was shocked took her two hours to realise how inappropriate it was, but again… call centre.

  42. sittingdownonthejob*

    As a person who uses a wheelchair, team building stuff is almost always a nightmare. Either folks don’t think about whether or not I could physically participate, or they do but are way off (think no stairs but also no useable bathrooms) and get upset at me for not being grateful for the “accommodations”. If they don’t, and I ask, I’m a problem. If they don’t ask and I don’t either, when I arrive to a flight of stairs folks ask “why didn’t you mention it?” Add to that, for reasons having nothing to do with using a wheelchair, I don’t like to dance/act/role play, and often get singled out to do so by someone making it *very clear* that’s it’s accessible so I can participate and then saying “no thanks” becomes extra awkward. Don’t even get me started on navigating buffet lunches, attempting to move with a drink in my hand, or standing heigh tables…
    (This is across 20+ years of employment, not one specific employer.)

    1. Melissa*

      I’m not disabled but I could absolutely envision what you’re saying, especially about making the event “accessible” specifically for you, without asking if you want to do it or not (and then it’s hard to say no).

    2. I Have RBF*

      While I’m not a chair user, I am mobility impaired, use a cane, and only have the use of one hand (stroke survivor). Buffets, standing height tables, trying to hold a drink and food with one hand, nowhere to sit, uneven lawns to try to walk on… I’m in solidarity with you on this. I will often buddy up with a chair user because they have more hands while I have more ability to open doors.

  43. Firefly*

    We had to go on a day-long retreat, and share all our favourite songs with each other, and listen to management talk earnestly about how valued we were, only a few months before they slowly started making most of us redundant.

    1. Coffee Protein Drink*

      I’m guessing the planners weren’t able to get their deposit back, though it’s possible they didn’t know about the upcoming layoffs.

    2. Cedrus Libani*

      At least they managed to do it BEFORE the layoffs.

      This isn’t a team-building story, but it was the worst professional experience of my life. As a college freshman, I worked on a space biology project, and I’d earned a trip to the yearly conference in Reno to present it. As you might imagine, basically everyone at that conference was funded by NASA…which had, right before the conference, decided to make serious cuts to space biology research. I would estimate that 90% of attendees had either just been fired or knew their days were numbered, and those were the ones who bothered to show up. The organizers tried to put a brave face on it, but it was a funeral, and it was so awful that I quit science and went pre-med for a while.

  44. It's Marie - Not Maria*

    My least favorite Team Building Activity was having to go the Casino with the Senior Leadership Team. I have never seen the attraction in gambling, and asked if we could do something else. Of course, I was told no. I was bored out of my mind for four hours.

    But what if someone on the Team was covering from a Gambling Addiction, or was struggling with dealing with a loved one who had such an addiction?

    1. Lady Lessa*

      I’ve been in Casinos with tour groups, and I, too, find them very boring. I hate losing money, so I only played for $5.00.

      (I like games, but don’t even pay in my Match 3 ones)

  45. NotSoRecentlyRetired*

    The first activity at a training class I attended years ago was to act out the role that was on the paper given to you and interact with your team of 5 or 6. I don’t remember what the actual goal was. Anyway, I have always had difficulty role-playing and I went into anxiety mode, leaving the room & coming back, couldn’t sit down, etc. The others on my team thought that was the role I was given and tried to calm me down, which (of course) made me stressed to near tears!

  46. Coffee Please*

    I plan team building days with my team (there are 6 of us — we’re a small team) but they are essentially field trips to visit other similar organizations. We work in informal education so we plan 1-2 visits somewhere, have a couple tours we colleagues, have lunch together, and call it a day. We’ll do follow-up meetings after to talk about how to implement (or not) things we saw that we liked. It’s a nice way to get out of the office and spend time together but still get something accomplished.

  47. Bruce*

    We had indoor go-cart racing as a team building activity once. I was pretty competitive, as was another guy… he was ahead of me on the final race and I tried to cut inside him on a turn, he clipped me making his turn and spun out. Then I was black-flagged by the course marshal and was sent to the back of the field… to be fair, it was a foul on my part, though not an intentional one, I thought I had a shot to pass. I think the other guy resented that I knocked him out of the lead, we had a lot of hobby overlap but I noticed a chill. I made a light hearted apology, but I don’t think it helped. He went on to found a small company that makes useful and expensive devices for a hobby we share, maybe I’ll run into him at a trade show some day…

  48. Bruce*

    I will say that I’ve enjoyed some events that have light hearted contests that don’t require extreme athletic skill, though I’m sure those can be exclusionary for some people. The funniest one was a karaoke contest where I had to put on a long blonde wig and sing a Supremes song to the best of my ability as a guy with a tenor voice… I was given credit for really trying :-)

    1. Bruce*

      Reading some of the other comments about performing… in the karaoke case we only had to provide one performer from our team, and I was a willing tribute. My sense of “normal” was broken long ago by being on the staff of a Boy Scout camp when I was a teen, we had to get up and perform at the camp fire shows… one time the MC called me up to lead a song when I had laryngitis… it was not pretty!

  49. KJ*

    I had an insane manager (the laundry list of her issues would fill a Tolkein novel – edicts to wear make up and pantyhose, making me tell her when I went to the bathroom, etc) who’s idea of “team building” was mandatory pole dancing.

    Pole dancing with a colleague who had actively bullied me about my weight (and never apologised).

    Pole dancing after a lunch where she had been drinking heavily.

    Thankfully that was the same day I got notice of a new job offer, so I went there and sat through it, reminding myself that on Monday I would get to go into her office and quit. (Which I did, with great joy, and also with bruises from the pole dancing).

  50. Elio*

    I’m glad the worse thing my job had us do was a dumb Myers-Briigs or whatever it’s called and then chat about it for 3 hours. But hey, if they want to pay me my high hourly rate to do stuff like that instead of work, whatever. At least the food they gave us was good.

    However, if my employer decided on mandatory hiking for team building, I would lawyer up so fast.

  51. Wolf*

    Worst teambuilding I had was an evening of cooking together. Doesn’t sound too bad? It was at the home of our boss, and the youngest team member (me) had to be the server when everyone ate. And it was a six hour long event. It was incredibly uncomfortable.

  52. Madame Arcati*

    I just read the story that inspire this (linked from the Slate article) and…good grief. I was expecting a mistake from disorganisation, something like, we thought he was with the other group and vice versa. But no, seems like some carelessness and a bit of a cavalier attitude.
    They knowingly let him attempt the summit alone (he does bear some responsibility for that too of course)
    They remove markers to show the way in a scree field
    He gets lost and sends his location and rather than get help they tell him to climb back up to the summit (!) to find the right descent.
    He sends his location again and a bad storm soon blows up but they don’t get help for another five hours.

    For comparison for any UK readers, the mountain in question is over three times as high as Ben Nevis (our tallest mountain).

  53. VintageLydia*

    I’m in gov’t now and thankfully that means our team building activities are optional picnics during the work day and the occasional team pot luck. Other offices may go all out but we have to pay for everything ourselves (can’t be wasting taxpayer funds on coffee let alone morale boosting and team building) so no elaborate ropes courses or outside consultants with cringe worthy ice breakers. I miss dinners paid for by my employer and stuff like that but this team is the most cohesive I’ve ever been on and we dont have all that. Likely coincidence but employee buy in and organization of everything doesn’t hurt.

  54. Lizzie*

    We’ve had some fun, but mostly questionable team buildings. The questionable ones were usually physical activity, which I am not great at, just because TPTB wanted to do them. Others included going to a venue for a show where we were the ONLY adult group, surounded by school groups. that was fun. not.

    the ones I actually enjoyed, actually the ONLY one, was going to cooking class. that was fun, but I’m a foodie, so it appealed to me.

  55. Seven If You Count Bad John*

    Hah just last night I read a book by Christopher Brookmyre, BE MY ENEMY, which is about a corporate team building excursion gone hideously—and often hilariously—wrong. (The whole thing turns out to be a setup for murder, which is not a spoiler.) Heads literally roll. I found it cathartic.

  56. Nerd Mama Tech Product Manager*

    Alas, all our team-building activities are going out for drinks. I don’t drink. And I’m celiac. I’m the only female on the team. I’m a decade or more older than these guys (most are the age of my kids). Fortunately, we all are nerds and science geeks. I have worked really hard teaching myself that “It isn’t the venue or the menu, it’s the connection.” But by golly those are B-O-R-I-N-G events.

    1. I Have RBF*

      At least you have the nerd thing going for you. My favorites teams have all been full of SF&F geeks, managers who have awesome Lego sculptures of various props, and when in the office had SF&F cube decor. Those places being an introvert and a nerd was not a bad thing.

  57. alle*

    We once had a one day team-building event that involved some pretty intense exercise (such as racing while pushing someone in a wheelbarrow). Everyone in the office was complaining about having sore muscles the next day.

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