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Team building just makes me shudder. A bad experience with a job I had in Korea made me almost swear off drinking entirely because I came to associate it with h

Team building just makes me shudder. A bad experience with a job I had in Korea made me almost swear off drinking entirely because I came to associate it with hwaeshik where I'd drink with obnoxious seniors while having to ward off their passive-aggressive male dominance bullshit. It was partly my own fault for setting expectations the wrong way. My friend who hired me and was the team's other foreigner just refused to go from the start. That worked out better for him in the long run, even if it gave him the reputation of being the difficult anti-social foreigner. Push-ups are well within my wheelhouse (and if you do a few hundred a day it's not a bad one-exercise regimen to keep some minimum level of upper body and core strength), but I'd still feel really stupid doing them with my team mates, especially in our business.

joelrunyon 15y ago
"Feeling stupid" isn't necessarily a good metric for determining whether or not something is worthwhile doing. Lots of people doing something "stupid" end up being incredibly successful.
- psykotic 15y ago
  I thought my anecdote suggested quite clearly why I consider it stupid. Reading over it again I still think it does, but I'll spell it out for you: These kinds of team-building rituals make certain people very uncomfortable and anxious. This is no doubt lost on a lot of the empathy-challenged type-A personalities that tend to infect middle management. When it comes to push-ups I wouldn't personally have a problem performing them, but I'd really hate to see the weaker guys suffer. In the eyes of team building gurus, that kind of suffering and struggle is supposed to lead to a death-and-rebirth bonding experience. But for many people, it's the kind of thing that will make them dread going to work every morning.
  - joelrunyon 15y ago
    I think it completely depends on the situation. In my opinion, the OP didn't come across as "empathy-challenged type-A personality" and his company seems small enough that everyone involved seems okay doing them. While it might not be great for everyone (maybe especially in corporate environments), it didn't come across mean-spirited or ill-willed at all in this case. Edit: That said, I'm sorry you had a bad experience with what seems like a terrible job.
    - psykotic 15y ago
      > That said, I'm sorry you had a bad experience with what seems like a terrible job. The job itself wasn't that bad. Korea has some cultural quirks from a Western point of view. The drinking and prostitution culture around the workplace are chief among them. But most of the blame falls on me for not setting the right expectations from the beginning since I was the guest in a foreign country. Lessons learned and all that. But if something analogous were to happen to me in a Western workplace, I wouldn't let culture shock take the blame.

joelrunyon 15y ago

"Feeling stupid" isn't necessarily a good metric for determining whether or not something is worthwhile doing. Lots of people doing something "stupid" end up being incredibly successful.

psykotic 15y ago
I thought my anecdote suggested quite clearly why I consider it stupid. Reading over it again I still think it does, but I'll spell it out for you: These kinds of team-building rituals make certain people very uncomfortable and anxious. This is no doubt lost on a lot of the empathy-challenged type-A personalities that tend to infect middle management. When it comes to push-ups I wouldn't personally have a problem performing them, but I'd really hate to see the weaker guys suffer. In the eyes of team building gurus, that kind of suffering and struggle is supposed to lead to a death-and-rebirth bonding experience. But for many people, it's the kind of thing that will make them dread going to work every morning.
- joelrunyon 15y ago
  I think it completely depends on the situation. In my opinion, the OP didn't come across as "empathy-challenged type-A personality" and his company seems small enough that everyone involved seems okay doing them. While it might not be great for everyone (maybe especially in corporate environments), it didn't come across mean-spirited or ill-willed at all in this case. Edit: That said, I'm sorry you had a bad experience with what seems like a terrible job.
  - psykotic 15y ago
    > That said, I'm sorry you had a bad experience with what seems like a terrible job. The job itself wasn't that bad. Korea has some cultural quirks from a Western point of view. The drinking and prostitution culture around the workplace are chief among them. But most of the blame falls on me for not setting the right expectations from the beginning since I was the guest in a foreign country. Lessons learned and all that. But if something analogous were to happen to me in a Western workplace, I wouldn't let culture shock take the blame.