You should find other ways to break the ice
I’m not sure when in the history of human evolution we decided ice breakers were necessary. I recognize not everyone is a natural sparkling conversationalist but surely we can all learn enough basic social interaction skills to meet one another without needing to find out the first concert everyone went to, their favorite color or what breed of dog they identify with most.
I was once on a 45-minute zoom call (pre-pandemic) with somewhere between 12 and 15 people where we had to all say which candy bar we’d be (on the off chance we all were in an alternate reality where humans were turned into candy bars?) I ended up going second to last and said “I’d be a Ferrero Rocher because I’m a little pretentious.” I thought I’d get a few giggles but then the only person left to go after me started screaming “I WAS GOING TO BE A FERRERO ROCHER, AND YOU DIDN’T EVEN GET THE REASON RIGHT. IT’S BECAUSE THERE’S A NUT IN THE MIDDLE!!! YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO SAY YOU’D BE A FERRERO ROCHER BECAUSE THERE’S A NUT IN THE MIDDLE!!!!!” It could have been awkward but the meeting wrapped shortly thereafter; that’s right, we had a 45 minute meeting scheduled and nearly 25 minutes of it was used for an ice breaker.
Perhaps that’s one of the biggest switches I’ve experienced professionally in changing my career from working in an agency model with billable hours to the world of start-ups and software; it’s hard for 15 people to each bill 30 minutes to learn whether their coworkers think a Swedish fish can represent their identity. In my time agency-side, outside of team off-sites, I can’t think of that many activities that were too rah-rah for me.
I suppose there was the time Kaitlyn and I decided to dress as other co-workers for Halloween and I needed to find something with skulls on it but was traveling. I ended up inside the mall in Dearborn, MI at a Hot Topic which would have been traumatic enough on its own (if you weren’t sure retail was dying, I promise you the Town Center Plaza in 2011 made it pretty clear where things were headed) but was made worse by the fact that I exited the mall and then couldn’t find my rental car.
I was completely panicked running around the parking lot and a family with young children came up to me to and offered to help me look for my silver Ford Fusion. After about 15-20 minutes, I eventually found my car except that it turns out I’d rented a blue Ford Taurus. I was mortified while the parents disapprovingly shook their heads and probably warned their children to not waste their time helping a deranged woman again in the future. Needless to say, by the time I flew home and went to work dressed in my skull adorned-clothing, any chance at enjoyment was gone.
I know my general perspective on costumes is well-documented so I am hoping that not knowing which rental car I had been driving is on-brand enough to make up for the shock and horror that I’d voluntarily participate in a costumed activity. Although, as I type, I do wonder if the trauma from this event is what drove much of my negativity around costumes in general…
While not costumed, I did have to go to a Kid Rock concert for a work event and the attire of the crowd was costume-like. This was the only time I got to use the corporate box at Comerica Park when I was working in Detroit and while there were a number of key takeaways that night, I was most aware that (a) no one else in the audience looked like me, (b) I would never wear the kinds of outfits sported by the majority of women there — not that there’s anything wrong with a bedazzled denim tube top — and (c) I don’t even know what stores someone would go to to find said clothing. I guess if I had to find apparel for a Kid Rock concert, my first stop probably would have been Hot Topic but we saw how that turned out. If you’re curious, I wore jeans and a black shirt (before buying a Kid Rock t-shirt at the stadium).
A note that this was the pre-super racist/pro-Confederate flag era Kid Rock and outside of being captivated by the crowd, I really did come away from it with a lot of respect for him as an artist. I think in the course of the concert he played at least five instruments and at one point had a stripper on a pole above the stage but then replaced her with a gospel choir. In both cases, that’s a lot of range to be able to show while keeping a crowd of nearly 40,000 in the palm of your hand.
When I reflect on mandatory (or highly encouraged) but enjoyable team-building activities, that Kid Rock show nears the top. Nearly a year later, Jeff and I went to see Kid Rock perform with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra but the vibe was not as good… not only was there neither a stripper nor a gospel choir but the drunk women in front of us were so loud and sloppy that they had to be escorted from the building. They were not wearing denim tube tops but they definitely knew where to buy them.
Since relocating to the Philadelphia area, I’ve had no Kid Rock moments but have had my fair share of team building activities where I really questioned my new reality. Early on at one company (and still the midst of the pandemic), I was asked to participate in the making of a video to welcome new hires. I was supposed to say a bunch of enthusiastic and trite lines but had to punt that to someone else because I knew I couldn’t do that convincingly (thanks, Natalie!) That left my role as simply going “woooooooo!” three times in the course of a two minute video and then clapping excessively at the end. I got such a case of the giggles; I couldn’t come back from it. I was laughing to the point of tears and completely unable to speak while my shoulders violently shook.
Unfortunately, I had not worked with any of these people long enough for them to find it endearing and, doubly unfortunately, the video was unusable because the person who filmed it didn’t know how to edit and the final minute is just me apologizing and explaining that I’m just not able to authentically “woooooo!” That said, I know that had I been the one to receive such a video, I would have been second guessing my decision to take the job and so I do think by not sending it, it may have helped us from a recruiting standpoint.
Perhaps that’s the biggest problem: I just can’t fake enthusiasm. I cannot fake being happy when I’m not and it’s so glaringly obvious to everyone around me that I know it affects my ability to sell others on what’s happening. Please note: I am a very enthusiastic person. I send all caps messages via text or email with multiple exclamation points several times a day. Most recently, I’ve been authentically and overly enthusiastic about: Coke Zero suddenly being stocked in the office, Alec Murdaugh’s sentencing, every single thing going down with Tom & Raquel & “Vanderpump Rules,” a truly exceptional piece of cake I had from Factory Girl Bake Shop in New Hope (vanilla & lavender cake with blackberry jam filling & salted milk chocolate buttercream frosting — I can’t believe I’m restricting myself to lowercase letters as I describe it here) and a new record time set for the Saturday NYT crossword.
So based on what I’ve written above and on your knowledge of me via this newsletter either in general or in real life, let me describe a scenario at work and you can guess on a scale of 1 to 10 how eager I was to participate: members of my company’s leadership team had to compete against each other in sports trivia and if you got the answer wrong, you had to limbo in front of everyone.
Tabbing down to allow for some drama before you see the correct answer.
The answer is less than 1 and the negative score is possible because my team knew how miserable I was (due to a combination of my dour face and me going over to the table saying “I want to stab myself”) and cheered for me during my two times up for questions extending the discomfort.
I’ll address the second part of the challenge first: I do not limbo. I am inflexible in mind, body and spirit, thus limbo is not a good fit. The other piece, public knowledge of sports trivia, is, frankly, even more of a struggle although I have come a long way from high school days of requiring a Power Point overview of the game of football (thank you to a lot of “Friday Night Lights” episodes and the fact that I found “30 for 30” so compelling).
While I’d love to point out some light sexism built into an all sports trivia contest, it turns out that the “all sports trivia” advertised game was actually blended with general pop culture trivia and I lucked out when my first question was about the Super Bowl halftime show. My second question was “who was the first Disney Princess?” and while I listened to some of the dudes on my team shout “Cinderella,” there isn’t a pale girl with dark hair who doesn’t proudly know Snow White came before all the blondes.
Up until that day, I think being trapped in a dirty house with overly friendly rodents and seven small miners was my biggest nightmare, but now I know it’s future corporate team building events with limbo built in.