mandatory "fun" in the office

[FREE866]

https://www.bbc.com/worklife/articl...ry-fun-in-the-office?utm_source=pocket-newtab




oh man....I so remember getting those cringe worthy emails about mandatory office get togethers


Thank God I don't have to deal with this anymore

 

[Car-Guy]

Ours were never mandatory and the few I attended were almost always "uncomfortable". Don't miss those at all.

 

[tmm99]

I didn't mind pizza in the lunch room (i picked up pizza and went back to my cube to eat instead of eating it there) or department outings after work (we were all fairly close so it was fun) but I hated company-wide parties. My boss wanted me to go once I became a manager, but I never went unless it was held during work hours (mandatory) and I avoided mingling.

 

[exnavynuke]

In the military, this was a BIG thing. Less so once I went to the civilian world, but still "encouraged" for sure.

A friend started a brewery, it's called Mandatory Fun Beer Works in collaboration with a meadery they're part of. https://www.facebook.com/MFBeerWorks/

 

[FREE866]

Yeah, actually the more I think about it, once I was at the actual event I was fine, but even then I could only deal with it in small doses. The initial feeling I would have when getting notified though was absolute dread haha

 

[FREE866]

I didn't mind pizza in the lunch room (i picked up pizza and went back to my cube to eat instead of eating it there) or department outings after work (we were all fairly close so it was fun) but I hated company-wide parties. My boss wanted me to go once I became a manager, but I never went unless it was held during work hours (mandatory) and I avoided mingling.

Yeah, well once you're a manager it's definitely more expected to show up. I was always a middle of the road sales guy. Toward the end of my career I noticed I really just liked one on one contact, but recoiled from group events.

 

[ncbill]

Our department head would have us all meet at his favorite local bar.

I started to keep track of his prodigious consumption after his behavior started becoming more erratic.

Took awhile to figure out what was going on...until he had his girlfriend attend one get-together.

While still married and living with his wife.

Wish I had hired a PI (or had a lawyer hire one) to properly document his increasing problems with alcohol.

 

[ExFlyBoy5]

Ah, let me count the ways how retirement is far better than this w*rking madness.

 

[razztazz]

I never worked long enough at a high enough level on civvy st to have to endure this, as exnavy said, the military is big on this. If you didn't have an alcohol problem or wished to acquire one, you could pretty much estimate where your career would level off at. All this nonsense is just a psychological control mechanism. A "we don't trust you" set up. It has nothing to do with work.

 

[Alex The Great]

Ah, let me count the ways how retirement is far better than this w*rking madness.

I'm not retired yet but what I know for sure that working from home has been a wonderful experience to avoid all this during the last couple of years. Unfortunately WFH will come to the end at some day likely this year with most employers.

 

[MrsHaloFIRE]

Only thing worse than attending is being responsible for throwing.

And in the military world they never cease. Cocktails. Dinner parties. Group dinners out. Spouses coffees. Officers gatherings. Receptions. Sr staff dinner at the big boss's. Rent-a-crowd when the big boss's boss flies in. Take the big boss's wife to lunch and the museum. Drinks with visiting /local VIPs who support the base. Retirements. Changes of command. Promotions. Christmas Receptions. Parade of Homes. Transfers of authority. Balls. Hail and Farewells. Ad nauseum I could go on. And this is the modern military. Not the old school ladies wear gloves/hats kind of days. Civilians can kind of take it or leave it but for the uniformed, its kinda wink wink not mandatory but wink wink I will see you there.

 

[aja8888]

Only thing worse than attending is being responsible for throwing.

And in the military world they never cease. Cocktails. Dinner parties. Group dinners out. Spouses coffees. Officers gatherings. Receptions. Sr staff dinner at the big boss's. Rent-a-crowd when the big boss's boss flies in. Take the big boss's wife to lunch and the museum. Drinks with visiting /local VIPs who support the base. Retirements. Changes of command. Promotions. Christmas Receptions. Parade of Homes. Transfers of authority. Balls. Hail and Farewells. Ad nauseum I could go on. And this is the modern military. Not the old school ladies wear gloves/hats kind of days. Civilians can kind of take it or leave it but for the uniformed, its kinda wink wink not mandatory but wink wink I will see you there.

I kind of missed that stuff while I was in the military overseas between 1965 and 1966. No fun parties going on where I was.

But later in life working, our small company did a Team Building week in the Colorado mountains. Besides being a PIA, the highlight of the week was figuring out that the CEO and his young Admin were staying in the same cabin!

Rank has it's privileges I guess! (He was a scumbag anyway)

 

[ls99]

During my short time at a Radio Paging company had to fly to Florida from Baltimore for a Team Building weekend. All except 8 hours sleeping time was scheduled, including Boozing time in a bar.

As they were one of the largest pager customers of Motorola, they even connived Morotola pager factory emplyees to show up and pretend to enjoy.

After returning to Baltimore got a survey to fill out about the lessons learned and "how did you like the....."
In comments I wrote, might as well have held it in Siberia.
I left the company a few weeks later.

 

[rodi]

Only thing worse than attending is being responsible for throwing.

And in the military world they never cease. Cocktails. Dinner parties. Group dinners out. Spouses coffees. Officers gatherings. Receptions. Sr staff dinner at the big boss's. Rent-a-crowd when the big boss's boss flies in. Take the big boss's wife to lunch and the museum. Drinks with visiting /local VIPs who support the base. Retirements. Changes of command. Promotions. Christmas Receptions. Parade of Homes. Transfers of authority. Balls. Hail and Farewells. Ad nauseum I could go on. And this is the modern military. Not the old school ladies wear gloves/hats kind of days. Civilians can kind of take it or leave it but for the uniformed, its kinda wink wink not mandatory but wink wink I will see you there.

My BFF's first husband was a navy officer.... She hated that there was pressure for her to attend various officer wife's functions since she wasn't in the military - he was... She was getting her BS at the time. One senior officer's wife actually suggested she skip a final exam because some officer's wive's tea was more important. She still declined.

At my work we had some minor social stuff in the office... but nothing was mandatory... If it involved free food, us engineers showed up.

 

[Gumby]

The young wife absolutely refused to have anything to do with the Navy, including the "wives' group". She wouldn't shop at the commissary or base exchange or even go on the Naval Hospital for care. I'm fairly certain that the whole time we were married while I was on active duty, she never went on base for any reason. As far as she was concerned, I just had an odd job and took extremely long "business trips". Unusually, I was totally incommunicado during those trips (submarine deployments), but that's how she chose to see it. Since I knew from my first day in the Navy the exact date I would be leaving, it didn't matter to me.

 

[luckydude]

Early in my "career" I worked as a staff consultant for a global consulting firm.

One time the local office organized a weekend cruise to Mexico, all expenses paid by the firm. Everyone in the office was "strongly encouraged" to attend.

I opted not to attend. I reasoned that weekend was my personal time and I didn't want to spend it hanging out with people from work. My mentor was notified of my decision and called me in for a lecture on the importance of networking, team building and benefits to my career with the firm, with strong hints at possible downside if I didn't "get with the program".

Being toned deaf, I stuck to my decision and opted out. Came the Monday after, I found out that I was the only one in an office of 200+ who didn't go, and I was marked out as a guy who wasn't fully "with the program".

Maybe that's why my career didn't go far and I ended up FIREing at 47.

Oh well...

 

[wrigley]

I'm not retired yet but what I know for sure that working from home has been a wonderful experience to avoid all this during the last couple of years. Unfortunately WFH will come to the end at some day likely this year with most employers.

Been WFH since March 23 2020. We all knew it would come to end some day. We were informed the first week of April 2022 we would be returning to the office a minimum of 2 days a week to start. The second week of April the CEO announced whoever would like to permanently WFH may do so starting immediately.

Mike

 

[jollystomper]

I never had a problem with these as long as they served food . There was almost always extra food/drink/dessert at the end, and I would a time bring home enough for dinner for the family. It helped our LBYM ways.


One of the advantages of having a "client facing" job career at Megacorp was that if there was a "mandatory" meeting I did not want to attend, all I had to do was schedule a client meeting. Megacorp was never going to keep you from meeting with paying clients. It worked both ways. Some of my clients were friendly enough so that they would want me to meet with them so that they could avoid some meeting/event at their company.