Stop with the ridiculous team-building exercises already

11 September 2016 - 02:00 By Ndumiso Ngcobo
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Ndumiso Ngcobo
Ndumiso Ngcobo
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Ndumiso Ngcobo says better bonding is done in the bar than on a bosberaad

School holidays are a work-from-home dad's worst nightmare. To quote a friend of mine, "Izingane ziphenduka imigodi engagcwali yobumnandi" (holidays turn kids into endless pits of entertainment).

I wish I had mastered my own father's approach to school holidays, which was to turn our household into his own Laogai or forced-labour camp. But I'm like putty in the midgets' hands, which is why I found myself peering through a window at Gold Reef City theme park last Friday, credit card in hand, yelling, "Three Thrill Rider tickets please".

And this was when I spotted them. Hordes of haggard, irritable people walking behind each other like sheep. Colour-coded sheep, based on the colour of bandanas on their heads.

Each group had a laminated A4 sheet with some kind of instructions and/or clues. They would stop intermittently to pore over the piece of paper and have fierce debates about which direction to go.

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The midgets thought I had lost my marbles because I started giggling hysterically. They only understood the source of my mental breakdown when I explained to them that the aunts and uncles in red, green or lavender bandanas must be employees of some corporation.

That they were at Gold Reef City to play games like five-year-olds because some Einstein from HR thought this is the best way to get them to be team players.

The 11-year-old went, "Didn't you write something about this in one of your books?" He was correct. In my first book, Some of My Best Friends are White, I did write an essay entitled "Crazy ass white people" in which I blamed white people for their baffling tendency to insist on playing stupid games in the corporate world in the name of team-building.

It's been nine years since that book came out and I have not yet been hauled in front of the Human Rights Commission, so I must have been onto something.

Seeing as I, too, was a panel on the corporate human conveyor belt before I left gainful employment, I totally understood the painful expressions on those folks' faces. I, too, had to sheepishly explain to a former high school mate that the reason I was scavenging through garbage cans at Gateway Shopping Mall, wearing a garish bandana and neon green paint on my cheeks, was not that I had fallen on hard times.

No, I was looking for Easter eggs to prove to my team that I was passionate about my job: ensuring that we didn't produce lumpy margarine. The job involved stuffing cubes of margarine into my mouth in the taste lab every morning. I wish I was making this up.

During this period of my life I became adept at recognising the different types of corporate employees, and last Friday I entertained myself with Corporate Type Spotting.

The first type I recognised was The Straggler. You know, that guy who, in a group of eight bandana-wearing employees, is struggling to keep up and walks about 1.5m behind the group. He's usually the chunky guy who takes 10 smoke breaks a day at the office.

There is The Office Grinch. This is usually the bearded fellow whose standard response to any e-mail is, "Sorry, but this is not the responsibility of the Finance Department". Yes, the Finance Department tends to attract a disproportionate share of grinches.

block_quotes_start Why don't bored HR types just put employees in a big room and give them alcohol?                            block_quotes_end

You know, those guys who refuse to pay out your travel claim because you overspent on the dinner allowance by R13.74 when you went to the Ocean Basket at the V&A Waterfront last week.

I was able to identify this particular Grinch because he was complaining bitterly about a parking ticket he was going to have to pay out of his own pocket.

Then there's The Annoying Teacher's Pet. In this particular group she was a tiny woman, barely 1.4m tall, with flawless skin and pearly white teeth. She was the one holding the map and the clues.

She's the type who, back at the office, regularly sends e-mails to everyone reading: "Hi Team, let's please be considerate and return the milk carton to the fridge after making tea. And remember not to use the brown-sugar teaspoon to scoop white sugar. Brown-sugar granules in the white-sugar bowl are unsightly."

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I knew she was the Teacher's Pet when the group in blue bandanas stopped between the Oldees Diner and the Gold Reef City Hotel to bicker about whether the instructions meant they must "stop" somewhere or "pause". She was the one who whipped out the instructions to correct everyone.

That's when I recognised The Office Eye-Roller. After the Teacher's Pet started walking purposefully again, she rolled the black of her eyes almost all the way into her skull at The Jackass. The Jackass snorted.

The Jackass is that guy in every office who thrives on being a dick. He's the guy who, when someone sends an e-mail about "loosing" a phone, replies to everyone to point out that the word is, in fact, "losing". He nitpicks his way through his career, his oxygen being right 100% of the time.

And then there's The Skulker. This is the employee who says nothing, does nothing, offers no initiative and seems happiest when they are invisible. Wherever the majority goes, they're there. Their motto in the workplace seems to be, "As long as my salary is deposited promptly into my account at 00h00 of every 25th, I'll do anything asked of me".

I spotted her because she was chatting on WhatsApp each time I ran into her in her orange bandana, the whole morning.

Suffice to say, I was thoroughly entertained by this spectacle. I ask now, as I did in my first book: why don't bored HR types just put employees in a big room and give them alcohol? I have never known a more effective way of getting people to bond than plying them with booze.

During company team buildings I used to belong to a category I like to call The Beer Guzzlers. Always first to the bar.

During last Friday's team building, I spotted a group of them congregated around cold Castle Draught tumblers at Barney's Pub. They were the happiest people of the whole bunch.

E-mail lifestyle@sundaytimes.co.za or follow him on Twitter @NdumisoNgcobo

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