Okay, so at my work they have these things they call team building events. More so with the home office than with my office and my department but this time we actually got to participate. Usually as in years past the departments would have a team building even like go see a baseball game together. Which I never understood how that builds the team but I guess it's just getting together outside of work and establishing a stronger bond with each other. My department has said we are going to do a team building event in the past but it never happens. Usually because we can't decide on what we want to do as a group. This year my whole department got to participate. Usually because we are a 24/7 shop the off shift workers don't usually get to join in because they are working or have sleeping from working all night, or even have to work that night and need to sleep. However this year because the VP wanted everyone to participate they called on some people from the home office to cover our department and systems so we could go. They decided to have a luncheon on the Delta King (that's a paddle wheel boat in the Sacramento river that doesn't move) and then a scavenger hunt in old town Sacramento.
The lunch was good I had a really good piece of beef, with steamed veggies. After lunch we were to divide into teams for the scavenger hunt. They wanted to mix up everyone so that you were on a team with people you don't usually have much contact with. So we did the school yard number off system... 1, 2, 3, 4 etc to establish who was on what team. As fate would have it my team was made up of the VP (Joe), the Manager of operations (Matt), a senior Administrator for our systems/network (Mitch), and two system Administrators (myself and a coworker in my department named Scott). Now as you know those in upper management spend a lot more time in meetings and not so much time actually doing things. Well that was the group I was in a more lets get together and discuss the matter and figure out how to go about doing it. The problem was the team to finish the scavenger hunt fist got a prize (extra drink tickets not something I cared about) and as everyone knows that is a major motivator for most drinkers. Oh funny side note regarding that is there are 2 Mormons that work in our building and we both ended up on the same team.
So we got are instructions headed out of the boat to find the clues for the hunt. Scott my coworker says I'll get the 5th one and meet you back here and takes off running. Well the rest of our team is still coming out of the boat and when they get up to me we start walking into town. I am afraid we will lose Scott and wish I had his cell number so I can call him to let him know where we went. I watch other groups take off running and split up to get the clues as well and my group just starts walking. So as we are walking down the street I am watching for Scott so we don't lose him but the leader of our group ( I use that term loosely because he was just the one walking in the front) wasn't really walking toward anywhere specific. I was trying to walk, read the clues and keep an eye out for Scott all that the same time. When I saw Scott he couldn't find us so I whistled for him and all the guys in my group said "Did you do that?" and I said yes because I needed to get Scott's attention which I did. Scott caught up to us and we proceeded down the street to head for another clue location. When we got to the next street we discovered we had gone the wrong way but there was a clue at that corner too so we got that one. Mitch and Scott both said they would run and get the two of the others and send us in the other direction to get the 3 clues that were together 2 blocks away. Well the remaining mangers i.e. Joe and Matt just stood there talking and I said we need to get moving and I took off down the street. Had I waited for one of them to decide to move we would have stood there a lot longer. So I lead the way with Joe and Matt walking behind me talking. I found the next 2 answers and we met up with Scott at the 3rd one. The store was closed for the next 30 minutes and we didn't know how we were going to get the last clue answered. We looked through the windows trying to figure out what item the clue was asking for, well Scott not being a person who can sit still long went into the Railroad museum and asked a guy inside there if he knew the answer. Since the questions are put out by the merchants of old town he did know and told Scott where to look. Once we had all the answers I thought we were suppose to return to the Delta King and meet up in the bar area as we were instructed but the document we were working off of said to go to one of the stores called Trailmix.net so that is where the group headed. It was in fact where we were suppose to go. We handed in our list and found we had one wrong. We rechecked that one by Scott running back over to the Delta King to count the flag poles and returned with the right answer. We asked if we were the first and she said yes. Our group was excited to be first, and after she rechecked our answers we had them all right. We wondered around the store for a while waiting for another group to show up but none did. I couldn't figure out why it was taking them so long to finish so we headed over to the Delta King to wait. We found everyone was over there and about 20 minutes later Denise (The VP's wife and judge of the game) come over. Everyone at the boat said they thought we were suppose to just return to the boat and meet at the bar after all the answers were gathered. (as did I) Since the instructions were unclear Denise gave the first prize to another team for being first. (they didn't run around they just pulled out their Iphones and googled the questions) There were only 2 teams that had all the questions right. (which I told Patrick they had the flag pole question wrong but didn't explain why I knew but he didn't change it) so we also got prizes for having all the correct answers. All in all it was a fun day and the food was really good. It cost me $10 to park even with the validation card of $5 off. I hung out with Cindy, and Scott for a while after everyone else left. Scott had another drink ticket, Cindy didn't want to leave him at the bar alone so we sat around and talked. We used to be on the same shift together and get along pretty well so it was fun just sitting there talking.
For my first team building experience it was good but I didn't think it built much team bonding if you ask me. I would have to say that we all pretty much stuck with who we already knew and didn't really build many bonds with anyone new.
