The Work Do: Classic or dud

I'm assuming that this is in the US, because all Work Do's in the UK seem to revolve around DRINKING rather than any pathetic attempts at team-building.

(That said, my last job tried to organise a "team-building exercise" and they wanted a whole weekend. I looked at them in horror, and said I was unavailable every weekend until FOREVER because it was bad enough that I had to spend all week long with them, I'd have curled in a ball and died if I'd had to waste a weekend with them. I was sacked shortly after...)

No, it's in the UK. Drink always ends up being the real reason for these dos, but why beat around the bush with the 'activity' aspect of it? That just serves to make an already unappetising prospect totally unacceptable!

Why don't you just suggest then, "The hell with this activity crap, let's just go down the pub?"

If indeed, you actually want to drink with them...

I'd like to take to some of my co-workers with a Paintball gun...

where i work there is a tendency to organise to go to bad shows eg operattas performed by local amateurs / dinner at super dodgy ( but expensive) restaurants or rugby games. it always seems so lame to me- i mean why on earth would you want to socialise with your workmates? aint thatwhat you do with yr friends? i once went to a dinner one . it was unbelievably horrible seeing folks i work with pissed and dancing on barrels. so. dud .

GO KART racing makes it all seem worthwhile - something it's hard to get enough people to make it cheap if it's just friends*

*well, if you are me

In my happily limited though nevertheless deeply ingrained experience the work do is a horror-show of Jacobean proportions where the only boon is getting the dodgy chap on accounts you always suspected of having criminal links pissed enough to detail his involvement in an elaborate though effective betting scam.

When I worked at W0r1dc0^^ we went go-karting. The supposed team-building aspect of it was ruined when the project manager decided he was going to choose the people on his team, picked all his mates (who were also the most competitive and best drivers), then won all the races, sprayed his crappy faux champagne over us all and scoffed most of the chicken nuggets.

The thing about go-karting is you wear this horrible manmade fibre suit that has been on countless sweaty bodies before you, so you have to put it on over other clothes to avoid it TOUCHING YOUR SKIN BLEURGH, which makes you even hotter and sweatier, then afterwards it is decided to go to a Pitcher and Piano somewhere near Oxford Circus in your horrible, stinking, damp clothing and if you bail out you are considered a spoil sport.

A few of us spontaneously decide to hire out a ski lodge or a yacht for a weekend or go together to watch the cricket or go to the pictures, or just go and have a few drinks and get to know each other: CLASSIC.

The Boss organises exactly the same activity and calls it a 'team building exercise' and hints at dark consequences for those who fail to attend Without Reasonable Excuse: DUD with a capital D followed by a capital U followed by another capital D followed by a long series of exclamation marks because not only has The Boss tried to make something happen artificially or at least artificially fast for all kinds of self-serving reasons which may or may not motivate you one iota but the officious interfering bastard has most likely zeroed for evermore the chance of such 'team building' occurring naturally which despite what The Boss's latest Mickey Mouse training manual or University of Kelloggs MBA might have told him is the only way it can occur at all.

My friend's cmpany had a work night out last night at the Daft Punk Anime film, which was pretty impressive. Though they also employ someone that needed to have the concept of going to gigs explained to him.

Christmas is coming, the months of work's dos at the restaurant....the month of baying arseholes who have no idea their in a restaurant.....being forced to have FUN because it's CHRISTMAS DAMMIT....the month of finding drunk secretaries passed out in the toilet when I'm locking up....I hate works dos.....

dud dud dud dud dud. i actually go out socially with two or three people i work with as a matter of course, because i really like them. but that doesn't count, because they're just friends i happen to have met through working in the same place and that's veryu lucky - this is the only place i've ever got on with anyone in the sense that i'm happy to spend more than a working day with them. otherwise work-related "fun" stinks because it never is - i mean i've chosen the people i want to include in my social life, the rest are people i can get on with 10-6, but nothing more than that and i loathe christmas parties with a passion.

"it always seems so lame to me- i mean why on earth would you want to socialise with your workmates? aint thatwhat you do with yr friends?"

Yes, hellbaby is almost threadstoppingly on the money here!

Soemtimes your workmates are your friends, duh.

What hellbaby and Stelfox said. Utterly wretchedly dud. I just don't go these days - I used to attend a few, but the combination of a 'teambuilding' event doing archery, climbing trees etc, followed by a desperately bad long-service awards night, stopped me for ever.

The teambuilding went the same way that these things always go - anyone you thought was a wanker beforehand you end up loathing even more. I can hardly bring myself to think about the long-service awards - I set out to get annihilated on free booze since we were staying in a hotel overnight, but was constantly wrenched back into sobriety by unspeakable visions of horror unfolding before me - a drunken manager pawing a secretary on the dancefloor, a prim human resources woman doing 'suggestive' dancing. I got the last train home.

ugh that sounds disgusting. at my last xmas works do, one of my colleagues timed how long it took me to leave after dinner ended and the "real fun" began. i bought a round of drinks so no one would think i was a tight bastard or an antisocial twat, and apparently then necked my pint in 7 minutes, left, went home and then met up with my friends - job done.

I used to work in an office with people I was mates with and work do's were really good because they involved good food and the pub and not too much of the 'activity' or 'disco' sides. Now though they are a yearly horror and I've not yet lined up my excuse for this year's :(

i feel your pain tom...

Eh, I don't mind mine that much. I get on pretty well with most of my colleagues and small techy firms => work dos = good dinners + pub.

I have never been on a team building exercise. The mere thought of them gives me the chronic ph34r.

I have tragically been unable to give my tenner deposit (towards a meal cost of £27.50, excl drinks) for my work Xmas dinner, because I expect to be moving house sometime near then (mid-Dec) so may be unavailable. I'm not really too heartbroken.

Other social events do get arranged. A pool evening wasn't bad (as in pool tables, not swimming), and the trip to Tate Modern for the Matisse/Picasso show was okay, except it did include one very nice colleague asking me "Have you spotted what it is yet?" in front of Picasso cubist paintings as if it was Rolf Harris or some magic eye game. I feel kind of morally obliged to join in on some of these things, but not too many of them.

We went on a paintballing day once. It wasn't team-building, no.

bowling = classic

We have a bowling for charity event that I gladly sign up for every year. It's drinking and smoking and bowling all on the company dime.

anything that smacks of team building though = dud

We're also having an office bowling night next week! Does m carty secretly work at my office?

Previously all work activities have been booze related so I can't say how the bowling thing will go. Come to think of it, it's probably at a bowling slash bar place. Why would anyone take the risk of bringing everyone together sober, that would surely end in disaster.

anything that isn't spontaneously social or part of regular celebrations - an imposed event - sounds k-poor. I can't recall ever HAVING to go to a work do.

Office xmas parties are especially marvellous. People you work with tremendously pissed! A-and in low-cut tops!*

*nb I am not impressed by this at all right now, for obv reasons.

Yes, it's the imposed event aspect of it all I don't like. Hanna's idea of a sober work do is an interesting one - maybe all people who suggest the 'team-building' type events should be forced ot endure them boozeless, and then their true painfulness would quickly become clear!

part of it has to do with what kinda office you work in, and who you work with. I'm surrounded by Mundanes/Muggles/Normal People/Breeders/Midwestern Suburbanites. I don't want them choosing a show that we all attend.

plus, the after-work events/parties/whateva have the vibe of being organized by your aunts, if your aunts were cheerleaders on the prom committee.

The only thing that unites the people I work with is a love for stuffing food & booze in our mouthholes, so most of the time extracurricular activities take place in restaurants or at picnics with coolers full of beers, save the very rare baseball game outing (where we all continue to eat & drink of course).

We don't get that kind of nonsense as we work in a small regional office with only four people and the company don't see the point in including us in the head office debacles as they are hundreds of miles away and there aren't enough of us to make it worthwhile organising separate things for us. (This is a GOOD THING). Our Xmas do involves the usual pissed colleagues and free drink (huzzah!) but with the huge disadvantage that it's in bloody Croydon and we have to fly home afterwards at some ungodly hour in the morning in a chronic state of hangoverness.

Bowling is so painfully classic, although it's true that forced-march office bowling is a dud. As is any forced activity. Including going to work.

the last bowling thing i went to with my copmany, i bowled the best game of my life, after not regularly bowling for 12 years or so.

odd. maybe the beer helped me.

I hate talking to anyone I work with, let alone socializing with them after hours.

Kingfish, did you place a bet on the match?

I have to go with classic. Although everyone in my office is quite cool, so it's not so bad. I would imagine that if there was a clique of baddies in the office, the whole thing would turn to dud pretty quickly.

Oh - DUD.

I used to work in an accounts office almost entirely populated by a load of 40-something women (temping). I went to the Christmas do as a gesture (rude to say no when you don't have an excuse) and was rewarded by the sight of all these menopausal, somewhat overweight ladies horrifically "dolled up" having ditched the office cardis for an evening and insisting that every man in the room ply them with vodka and gin all night before stomping onto the dancefloor en masse to gyrate to Candi Station's Young Hearts Run Free. The horror, the horror....

I remained determinedly sober for the next hour before scarpering, but I must admit it was quite interesting to watch from an anthrolopological perspective.