Boss Schedules 'Mandatory Fun' Meeting For 'Team Building' At 6 PM On A Friday
The employees didn't really have the fun she was hoping for.
Roman J Royce | Shutterstock Most people prefer to show up to work, do their job, and go home. Maybe they have co-workers that they consider friends, or at least have a friendly relationship with, but beyond a bit of socializing with them, they’re not relying on their job to provide any fun in their lives.
And that’s what work is all about, really. You work so you can have fun in your life outside of work. Unfortunately, some bosses don’t quite understand this and insist on holding team-building exercises in an effort to bring their employees closer together. One boss decided her team needed a morale boost, so she scheduled a "mandatory fun" meeting for them on a Friday evening. It didn't quite provide the fun she was hoping for.
A boss scheduled a team-building meeting for her employees that was supposed to be fun at the end of the day on a Friday.
One of the boss’s employees took to Reddit to complain about the meeting they were forced to attend, and they didn’t exactly offer a glowing review. “We’ve been remote for over two years, and somehow my manager still doesn’t get it,” they said. “Last Friday at 6 p.m., she sends a calendar invite titled ‘Team bonding time!’ right when everyone was about to log off.”
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“The call starts with awkward small talk, then she pulls out a PowerPoint quiz about company values,” the worker recounted. The employees tried their best to be present … sort of. They continued, “People were clearly muted, pretending to have ‘mic issues.’ One guy actually turned off his camera and started cooking mid-call.”
Eventually, the boss read the room and realized the meeting wasn’t working. But that didn’t stop her from trying again. “After 20 painful minutes, she says, ‘I don’t feel much engagement here,’ and schedules another one for next week,” they said. “I swear, nothing kills morale faster than forced fun.”
The truth is, team-building activities don’t really work the way bosses want them to.
Whether it’s a meeting meant to boost morale and build togetherness or one of those workplace retreats where everyone has to go rock climbing together, team-building exercises have been proven ineffective. In fact, Forbes contributor Liz Ryan said they can feel downright demeaning.
“Team building exercises are pointless and even insulting to your team members, because they suggest that if only your team members spent more time doing silly things and solving group problems together, climbing trees and rolling around on the floor, they would work more effectively together the rest of the time,” she stated.
Furthermore, she argued that resorting to team-building activities is actually a sign of a weak leader. “Being a leader means diving into conversations about sticky topics, rather than dancing around them and taking the team out for ice cream instead,” she explained. “Strong leaders can talk about icky, sticky topics. Weak leaders can’t.”
Reddit commenters posed a very important question about the pay for this meeting.
Redditors were curious about what the pay situation was for this “mandatory fun” meeting. One said they would have asked, “How do you want this recorded on my time sheet?” Another replied with, “Exactly, are they exempt or getting overtime pay?” A third person humorously added, “Exempt folk don’t care for it either …”
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According to the U.S. Department of Labor, “Employees covered by the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) must receive overtime pay for hours worked in excess of 40 in a workweek of at least one and one-half times their regular rates of pay.” So, it would seem that the workers involved in this team-building meeting should have been paid overtime if the meeting was outside of their regular hours. Of course, that doesn’t mean that actually happened.
Scheduling this meeting for any time of the week would feel pretty unnecessary, but to do so on a Friday evening when employees are ready to start their weekends is just rubbing salt in the wound.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
