Here it is, in its entirety. The Director’s cut if you will. Unrated, unvarnished, unreal, and all true. Times have changed, but in certain parts of the world, it has stood still. Breathe, relax into reading this post, center your Chi, breathe, it’s only a blog, it’s only blog, it’s only….
It is the early afternoon in a fall day in October, we are somewhere on the east coast of North America. The afternoon, Day 5 for me, in a sales kick off summit that resembles a “how not to” seminar on presenting, coordinating, feeding, housing, and motivating a new sales team. A conference room set up in the employee cafeteria and actually not bad.
Lunch was served prior to an afternoon of learning the company elevator pitch. Odd how the elevator-pitch (which is 60 seconds long) was a two hour session presented by yours truly, but that is the next post. Lunch was a unique combination of pizza and French fries. That is right, pizza and French fries. So I get to present to a group of carbo-infused, half dead with internal starch conversion, glassy eyed, power point stun gunned to near death last afternoon of data sales people for two hours about our 60 second pitch. I rocked it, and again, more on that in another post.
The afternoon broke up with a riveting review of what our R&D is doing. Seriously who schedules an R&D update late afternoon after a Force 5 carbo bomb lunch? Oh and the next 30 minute dream fest? The rep of the year had to present how he won a big account. One sheep, two sheep, three sheep….
The big moment arrived and with all the emotion of an engineer excited about an avatar modification in WOW the team building event was announced. Well more accurately it was attempted to be shrouded in mystery.
“We will be going to a local hotel in a big room where we will be divided into tribes and compete in mental physical and creative contest for a prize.”
Ploop. You could hear it, like a feculent turd in well mixed batch of Jimmy Jones; punch. You know the look a dog gives you when you are upset and castigating it for something. That blinking stare followed by lowered eyes and complete interspecies lack of communication? Yeah, that was the look on the sales team. Undaunted the leader continued to drone on about the “fun” and camaraderie that would inevitably result from caldron-like crucible of white collar competition in a hotel ballroom.
Now keep in mind it is just before 5PM and this is a 3 hour event, no food, no snacks and just water. So the blood sugar drop would play a key role in determining the winners.
The ballroom was decorated in late 80’s Las Vegas crass. On the floor is that weird spiral paisley carpet that would hide the most advanced CSI crime scene clue. Fixtures are faux brass; industrial brown curtains…er…window coverings (although there were no windows). Stackable chairs stacked at the perimeter, and an imitation, real simulated wood dance floor. At what can only be described as the head of the room, Happy Time Phil and his team building crew of two late 20’s men who obviously help the ladies first. Oh, our event only had three women and one was 7 months pregnant.
Happy Phil grabbed the microphone and tried to fire up the crowd consisting of six brain dead sales people, two stunned marketing executives, the engineering team, R&D, finance our CEO, CFO, and CTO. This is where he admitted to pursuing a career in ballet. Yeah, I know.
Teams were assigned bandanas as tribal colors. We received black bandanas, the remaining teams received; blue, green, brown, pink, and purple. Six teams of 5 each all ready to bond, compete, learn, and show the requisite level of unbridled enthusiasm. Oh, and if you are tardy on the uptake the theme is Survivor, the score is kept by the number of shells for each event (5 possible, and less if you are lame in the event). The most shells win and the prize, patience on that one.
The first event was a questionnaire with 20 categories where you had to go out to other teams and ask questions like; have you traveled out of the country?”Did you quit smoking recently? How many languages do you speak? The goal here was for Happy Phil to select some relevant questions and ask the people involved in the answer to answer over the microphone in more detail about the answers. The goal for Happy Phil was to select the most uncomfortable answer for explanation. One question actually did involve full frontal nudity between employees of the opposite sex. All told about 53 HR violations occurred throughout the evening. I personally had two.
Happy Phil selected me to talk about my world travels. I waxed on (and on) about my trip to Antarctica with emphasis on the British and Argentina battle of the treeless and now well mined, Falkland Islands. My goal here was to get Happy Phil to cut me off, but he let me go. I spoke of land mines, the Drakes Passage, Leopard Seals, Killer Whales, killer baked goods, Santiago Chile’s water and the trots, my first ice berg, offending no less than 6 passengers, the unreal stench of Penguin guano and wrapped with a plug for Abercrombie and Kent high end travel services that I figure only one or two other people in the room could afford. Yeah I was a dick and I was tired.
The next exercise was to come up with an intimidating tribal chant. Team Black (me and the guys) came up with “We are black and we’re proud! Say it out loud.’ That was HR violation number one for me.
Team Brown was; “UPS, something, something, something, go Brown!” In fact they used a much maligned marketing program involving watches sent to C-Level personnel emphasizing our company’s ability to do what our competitors do in less time. It bombed. Returned watches, dead batteries, miss-addressed packages, watches never sent out, a complete disaster. Brown did a take-off on the program and the room roared, except the CEO who lacked the genetic make up to poke fun at himself (it was his program). Again I will have another post on that.
Team Blue stepped up with a crudely built ship that had, and no one noticed, two blue balloon balls hanging off the back. At this point this is HR violation number 75.
Team Green was brutal and I could not remember same for purple, green and blue.
Team pink had the gayest one. “We are the Pinkies, you are the stinkies, we are cool, and you are fools!” F-me, that just happened.
The first event was building your tribal totem out of a bunch of left over k-5 supplies. Tribes were given 60 minutes and had to include a ceremonial presentation of the totem. Team Brown won, we came in last even though we built a kick ass electric guitar and were the only tribe to use the DJ music. Three shells, the beginning of the end for us.
After that was assembling a cube from oddly shaped parts, literally impossible for sales and marketing people, Brown won that one. Lead by our CTO who politely watched for a few minutes cleared everyone out and assembled it himself. This was followed by a crude game of Concentration, a roller board and a rope contest, balancing a pineapple on an octagonal board via 5 ropes to be moved off a pedestal and set down on another pedestal.
All in all general disbelief, hunger pangs and HR violations galore. Team Brown won and got a $2 plaster cast, made in China of course, of an indigenous tribal mask. Second place got a smaller version of the same thing, third place, same and smaller.
Afterword Happy Phil and his crew thanked us asked us to take our totems home (hunh?) and said “You are the best company ever!”
The beer flowed like wine, everyone bonded after by comparing the trials and tribulations of just getting through. Our leader and coordinator of the event sat in victorious repose, an odd smile, like George Bush gets when he remembers he thinks he is happy.
Fuggen whew.
It is the early afternoon in a fall day in October, we are somewhere on the east coast of North America. The afternoon, Day 5 for me, in a sales kick off summit that resembles a “how not to” seminar on presenting, coordinating, feeding, housing, and motivating a new sales team. A conference room set up in the employee cafeteria and actually not bad.
Lunch was served prior to an afternoon of learning the company elevator pitch. Odd how the elevator-pitch (which is 60 seconds long) was a two hour session presented by yours truly, but that is the next post. Lunch was a unique combination of pizza and French fries. That is right, pizza and French fries. So I get to present to a group of carbo-infused, half dead with internal starch conversion, glassy eyed, power point stun gunned to near death last afternoon of data sales people for two hours about our 60 second pitch. I rocked it, and again, more on that in another post.
The afternoon broke up with a riveting review of what our R&D is doing. Seriously who schedules an R&D update late afternoon after a Force 5 carbo bomb lunch? Oh and the next 30 minute dream fest? The rep of the year had to present how he won a big account. One sheep, two sheep, three sheep….
The big moment arrived and with all the emotion of an engineer excited about an avatar modification in WOW the team building event was announced. Well more accurately it was attempted to be shrouded in mystery.
“We will be going to a local hotel in a big room where we will be divided into tribes and compete in mental physical and creative contest for a prize.”
Ploop. You could hear it, like a feculent turd in well mixed batch of Jimmy Jones; punch. You know the look a dog gives you when you are upset and castigating it for something. That blinking stare followed by lowered eyes and complete interspecies lack of communication? Yeah, that was the look on the sales team. Undaunted the leader continued to drone on about the “fun” and camaraderie that would inevitably result from caldron-like crucible of white collar competition in a hotel ballroom.
Now keep in mind it is just before 5PM and this is a 3 hour event, no food, no snacks and just water. So the blood sugar drop would play a key role in determining the winners.
The ballroom was decorated in late 80’s Las Vegas crass. On the floor is that weird spiral paisley carpet that would hide the most advanced CSI crime scene clue. Fixtures are faux brass; industrial brown curtains…er…window coverings (although there were no windows). Stackable chairs stacked at the perimeter, and an imitation, real simulated wood dance floor. At what can only be described as the head of the room, Happy Time Phil and his team building crew of two late 20’s men who obviously help the ladies first. Oh, our event only had three women and one was 7 months pregnant.
Happy Phil grabbed the microphone and tried to fire up the crowd consisting of six brain dead sales people, two stunned marketing executives, the engineering team, R&D, finance our CEO, CFO, and CTO. This is where he admitted to pursuing a career in ballet. Yeah, I know.
Teams were assigned bandanas as tribal colors. We received black bandanas, the remaining teams received; blue, green, brown, pink, and purple. Six teams of 5 each all ready to bond, compete, learn, and show the requisite level of unbridled enthusiasm. Oh, and if you are tardy on the uptake the theme is Survivor, the score is kept by the number of shells for each event (5 possible, and less if you are lame in the event). The most shells win and the prize, patience on that one.
The first event was a questionnaire with 20 categories where you had to go out to other teams and ask questions like; have you traveled out of the country?”Did you quit smoking recently? How many languages do you speak? The goal here was for Happy Phil to select some relevant questions and ask the people involved in the answer to answer over the microphone in more detail about the answers. The goal for Happy Phil was to select the most uncomfortable answer for explanation. One question actually did involve full frontal nudity between employees of the opposite sex. All told about 53 HR violations occurred throughout the evening. I personally had two.
Happy Phil selected me to talk about my world travels. I waxed on (and on) about my trip to Antarctica with emphasis on the British and Argentina battle of the treeless and now well mined, Falkland Islands. My goal here was to get Happy Phil to cut me off, but he let me go. I spoke of land mines, the Drakes Passage, Leopard Seals, Killer Whales, killer baked goods, Santiago Chile’s water and the trots, my first ice berg, offending no less than 6 passengers, the unreal stench of Penguin guano and wrapped with a plug for Abercrombie and Kent high end travel services that I figure only one or two other people in the room could afford. Yeah I was a dick and I was tired.
The next exercise was to come up with an intimidating tribal chant. Team Black (me and the guys) came up with “We are black and we’re proud! Say it out loud.’ That was HR violation number one for me.
Team Brown was; “UPS, something, something, something, go Brown!” In fact they used a much maligned marketing program involving watches sent to C-Level personnel emphasizing our company’s ability to do what our competitors do in less time. It bombed. Returned watches, dead batteries, miss-addressed packages, watches never sent out, a complete disaster. Brown did a take-off on the program and the room roared, except the CEO who lacked the genetic make up to poke fun at himself (it was his program). Again I will have another post on that.
Team Blue stepped up with a crudely built ship that had, and no one noticed, two blue balloon balls hanging off the back. At this point this is HR violation number 75.
Team Green was brutal and I could not remember same for purple, green and blue.
Team pink had the gayest one. “We are the Pinkies, you are the stinkies, we are cool, and you are fools!” F-me, that just happened.
The first event was building your tribal totem out of a bunch of left over k-5 supplies. Tribes were given 60 minutes and had to include a ceremonial presentation of the totem. Team Brown won, we came in last even though we built a kick ass electric guitar and were the only tribe to use the DJ music. Three shells, the beginning of the end for us.
After that was assembling a cube from oddly shaped parts, literally impossible for sales and marketing people, Brown won that one. Lead by our CTO who politely watched for a few minutes cleared everyone out and assembled it himself. This was followed by a crude game of Concentration, a roller board and a rope contest, balancing a pineapple on an octagonal board via 5 ropes to be moved off a pedestal and set down on another pedestal.
All in all general disbelief, hunger pangs and HR violations galore. Team Brown won and got a $2 plaster cast, made in China of course, of an indigenous tribal mask. Second place got a smaller version of the same thing, third place, same and smaller.
Afterword Happy Phil and his crew thanked us asked us to take our totems home (hunh?) and said “You are the best company ever!”
The beer flowed like wine, everyone bonded after by comparing the trials and tribulations of just getting through. Our leader and coordinator of the event sat in victorious repose, an odd smile, like George Bush gets when he remembers he thinks he is happy.
Fuggen whew.
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