Team Building

Day: Friday, Mood: [sigh] Prospects: Cold and wet

Well, we made it. After crossing many lands and in the process enduring blistering cold and scorching heat (well, a lot of drizzle) we made it to the utopia that is Cragwell Bay Youth Hostel. And it is here that we shall learn to be better human beings. It is here that we shall learn how to work not as individual idiots, but as a team of idiots. It is here that we must endure a weekend of Council Teambuilding Exercises.

Yes, not content with pissing me off 5 days a week, my employer now feels the need to intrude on my happy time as well. A whole weekend spent pretending to care about people I’d like to see on fire. But by the end of it I am assured I will feel ‘part of an operational unit that trusts, cares and achieves together’. However, prior knowledge combined with commons sense tells me I’m going to spend 48 hours trying to avoid hypothermia whilst watching morons fail rudimentary tasks. Super.

So, after levering myself out of the minibus and waiting for the feeling to return to the lower half of my body (seating capacity 16 – presumably 16 one-buttocked people) we had little time to get acquainted with our new surroundings before being herded into the main hall for ‘supper’. I, like most fully functioning adults, remember school dinners as being shite. This evening I find that to be still true. Why, everyone knows the classier establishments don’t serve mash with an ice cream scoop, the lumps in the gravy should not be the most nutritious thing on your plate and portions of ‘cake’ don’t come in cubes. Also, I swear they’ve shipped in the same hairy ladies I remember from junior school to dish the slop out. What’s even worse is trying to force the ‘food’ down whilst slimy people try to network over the Spam fritters and green beans.

Then it’s off to bed. The accommodation is probably one level up from concentration camp yet would no doubt fail to meet the stringent requirements of the RSPCA. I do, however, appeared to have been lucky as regards bagging a mattress with minimal staining. I’m sharing a room with a mixture of people I know I hate and people I don’t yet know, but will no doubt hate by tomorrow.

Day: Saturday, Noon, Mood: Black, Outlook: Nautical

Having barely recovered from the delights of last night’s supper, breakfast time came all too soon. And what a delight it was: a variety of phallus-shaped bread-buns with your ‘choice’ of conserves (rhubarb or prune) washed down with a mug of lukewarm rat’s piss masquerading as coffee. And there was no time to savour the flavour – we had teambuilding to, erm, build…

Oh how I despise the old ‘everyone stand up for 2 minutes and tell us a little about yourselves’ exercise. It’s like some festival of awkwardness. Everyone not wanting to look like the world’s most boring idiot whilst also not wanting to cross the line of ‘too much information’. I like to refer to this as the ‘I like fishing…I like dogging’ paradigm. It’s not easy to sit for 45-minutes listening to librarians describing their inane existence. I never knew that so many people enjoyed cross-stitch. Nor did I care. By the time the finger of doom indicated it was my turn to prattle on about my favourite sports team and my sexual preferences, I could see that the room was wearing a face of desperate boredom which surely mirrored my own. Not wanting to extend the agony any more than was totally necessary I kept it short and decided against launching into a pre-prepared monologue about what would happen if I was in charge.

And so, safe in the knowledge that Eileen from the branch library goes line dancing every Tuesday and that Barbara from the schools library service collects thimbles, we were ready to begin our first exercise. Put into groups of 4 our challenge was to create a bridge from straws. Now, whilst knowing that this weekend was going to consist mainly of total bollocks even I was taken aback – not only by the stupidity of the task but by the furore that accompanied the ‘who gets to look after the glue gun’ debate. In short, our bridge-building failed, both in a literal sense and in a metaphorical inter-staff relations way. The actual bridge wouldn’t have supported a sparrow fart and team relations went spiralling out of control when the words ‘just give me the gun you fat bitch’ were uttered. Not by me I might add.

This afternoon we’ve been told to ‘get prepared to get wet’. I haven’t seen the Jacuzzi as of yet. I have seen the North Sea only 50 yards from the hostel however…

Day: Saturday, Evening, Mood: L Choppy, Outlook: Uphill struggle

Those Sea-King helicopters are bloody enormous when you see them close up you know. And what a racket they make. Still, at least it drowned out the screaming. (Hmm, maybe not the best choice of words, but what the hell). See, you’d think that when it became apparent that gluing straws together was a bridge too far, the organisers may have thought again before sending a bunch of librarians out on the open sea in crappy home made crafts built under time constrained conditions by idiots. But, you live and learn. Well, at least they probably will.

Put into groups of 4 (can you see a trend developing here?) we were told to construct a raft from what appeared to be a small maritime-themed shanty town. Barrels, ropes, lobster pots, used hypodermic needles – anything you can salvage you can use. Once you had constructed the HMS Shitty, the aim was to take to the high seas and paddle approximately 120 yards to a jetty. You had 45 minutes to construct your sea-bound death-trap before a good old fashioned race to the finish. So, with much huffing, puffing, sweating and swearing we set about tying 4 old barrels together with rope. Obviously in compliance with British Standards on nautical craft. It soon became apparent that some form of industrial espionage had taken place, as all the team’s designs seem fairly similar. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find someone in possession of a 92-page confidential document on making dinghies out of trash. Or maybe it was because all we had were barrels and rope.

So, when the claxon sounded, we took to the seas – 16 librarians aboard home-made craft with nothing between us and continental Europe except miles of unforgiving sea. Happily, about 5 metres out, our team sank. Rather spectacularly. Ropes broke, barrels shot off in four different directions and before I knew what was happening I was momentarily pinned to the seabed by Brenda from reference desk. After tossing her aside and dragging myself back to shore, there was some comfort to be taken from watching others sail into peril whilst knowing, although your own ineptitude had got you soaked, that was as bad as it was going to get. For others the nightmare was only beginning. Whilst one team managed to stay afloat only a few seconds more than us, the remaining two fought a titanic battle – seemingly in slow motion - for the kudos of first place.

Just as the two ramshackle rafts finally edged towards the jetty and everyone thought the contest was drawing to a close, the weather took a change for the worse (or indeed for the better, if you share my negative view on life). Now, I didn’t have a copy of the Beaufort Scale to hand, but I believe the meteorological term is ‘brown trousers time’. Up until now both craft had moved at a speed not dissimilar to that of a dying hedgehog, but now they were achieving major knottage. And they were heading to The Netherlands. The idea was mooted that we quickly construct a new craft and launch a rescue mission. This was vetoed for reasons too numerous to mention and the coastguard was called. Of course, now that the wind had picked up the engineering processes behind the building of the flimsy floating craft was put to the test: i.e. they capitulated, throwing a cluster of petrified information professionals into the raging waters. Cue much thrashing about like overexcited Labradors and the arrival of the coastguard in an enormous yellow helicopter. A little winch here and a little winch there and they’re off to hospital for treatment for shock, cold and raft-building inadequacies. At least they’ll get a better meal than me tonight. Bastards.

Day: Sunday, Noon, Mood: Ropy, Outlook: Claustrophobic

Whilst we were all manfully forcing down breakfast news reached us that the deep sea octuplet had sustained no serious injury and, like the morons they clearly are, would be returning for more punishment later today. In fact they arrived just in time to catch the end of ‘A call to action: satisfy your needs and win with teamwork’ – a gruelling motivational speech given by one Terry Weddle. Now, I had a number of problems with Terry’s ramblings:

1) 72 minutes is a long time to maintain a chorus of ‘YEAH!’, ‘WOO!’ and ‘RIGHT ON BROTHER!’ at appropriate intervals.

2) It’s like sitting through manual handling training. We can all pretend we’re going to be bending knees and keeping backs straight, but the minute its all over we’ll be lifting boxes with the favoured ‘rainbow spine’ technique. Similarly, we can all say ‘Yes Terry, we’re visualising…yes Terry, we’re communicating…yes Terry, we’re breaking through’ knowing well that as soon as Terry naffs off back to whichever brand immersion programme he’s crawled out from under we’ll all get back to ignoring each other and being purposefully awkward.

3) Terry couldn’t inspire me to breathe in and out.

With another hour-plus of life wasted by Weddle’s ramblings, we were the told to prepare for this afternoon's activities, which would be ‘both physically and mentally challenging and require us to work as a well organised team’. And would involve harnesses and ropes. Now, I’m no Sherlock Poirot, but I can piece together clues and work out that my afternoon is probably going to consist of encouraging/dragging portly, middle aged librarians up a cliff face. Against the clock. Lets just hope we don’t have to construct out own safety equipment our of old nautical rope and crab nets.

Day: Sunday, Night, Mood: Knackered, Outlook: Mundane

At last, back at home. And having now endured a weekend of ‘group self-assessment in the theory and practice of organizational development’, do I feel more able to ‘clarify goals and build ownership across the team, identifying the inhibitors to teamwork and remove or overcome them, or if they cannot be removed, mitigate their negative effect on the team’? Nope.
What I have learnt, in no particular order, is:

a) Librarians can’t build rafts

b) Librarians can’t climb cliffs

c) Librarians like glue guns

d) Terry Weddle is no Vince Lombardi

The final trial came this afternoon. Rejoined by our sea-bound friends of yesterday, we were given brief and unsatisfactory training on how to climb up a cliff face, and then told to climb up a cliff face as quickly as possible. ‘Remember to help each other as some of you will find this tougher than others’ we were told. What this translated as was ‘when you’ve dragged your sorry arse to the top of Death Mountain, be sure to give a good heave-ho on the rope and winch your obese colleagues up as well’. Still, a victory for team Pedro as we managed to complete the task first (with, somewhat disappointingly, no death or serious injuries to boot).

With victory still fresh in our minds it was back to the hostel for a final reflection on the weekend’s ‘success’ and afternoon tea, including some aptly named rock buns (I could have put windows out with them. And I’m talking double glazing). Everyone agreed it had been an adventure. No doubt in the same way those kids from Jurassic Park who narrowly avoid being eaten alive would class that experience as ‘an adventure’.

Then it was time to pile back onto the minibus and head for home. One agonising ride later and I can enjoy the utopian bliss of Sunday evening, knowing well that tomorrow I get to entertain the unemployable and the aged insane with tales of ocean rescue and Stallone-esque cliffhanging. God I hate libraries.