If you've worked at a company of any size, chances are you've gone to a corporate offsite -- and witnessed episodes of debauchery, mischief, and trust falls gone badly awry. Do you have any good stories about awful corporate offsites? We're looking for them.
What happened to make the offsite so bad? How did managers and coworkers behave? What was the intent of the meeting, and how badly did the result miss the intent?
Leave a comment or e-mail me. We may include your work in an upcoming B2 article.
(Corporate offsites include just about any meeting scheduled by your company away from the office. They vary from ropes courses and other wilderness adventures to swanky hotel conference rooms -- where, of course, you can't enjoy the settings because you're locked in the room hammering out corporate strategy.)
OK, I'll show my ignorance, what is an "offsite?"
Posted by: Snake | March 13, 2006 at 01:50 PM
To respond, an offsite is "any meeting scheduled by your company away from the office"...
My company had an offsite last weekend that didn't go so well: Our small staff of about 7 people met at a bar for dinner and a little business. 2 of the 7 got so drunk that they ended up puking in our booth, while another guy actually ran in the middle of the street with no pants on.
Posted by: funny shirt guy | March 13, 2006 at 11:20 PM
OK thanks, I guess the bigwigs call these meetings retreats? and hold them at Ritz Carltons?
Shee-at, our offsites are in cars in parking garages!
Posted by: Snake | March 14, 2006 at 06:30 AM
It was my first "office" job and I had been employed all of six weeks. When planning for the trip to the mountains the month prior, the planning committee had no idea who to room me with since they didn't really know me yet - so they put me with my new boss.
My boss, 30 years my senior, was a large woman who loved to "mother" her younger employees. She called me sweetie instead of by my name, and in front of a room full of other employees asked if i needed "tucking in" when I said I was turning in. I said "no," of course. Later when she came in (it was a room with two twin beds) she comes in from the bathroom in a full length but totally see-through nightgown. It was way too much information, and put a whole new spin on her mothering instincts. I was horrified and spent the rest of the weekend fleeing her. To this day I truly don't know if she meant anything by the nightgown, but as soon as we were back in the office I put a stop to being called "sweetie" and number of her other efforts to be too familiar with me. It ultimately killed our working relationship, but thankfully she respected the boundaries.
Posted by: lallaloolly | March 15, 2006 at 12:33 PM
August 2001 - The whole company called to a two day emergency off-site. We were all required to read 'Who Moved My Cheese' and discuss 'change,' and how we felt about 'change.'
September 2001 - 1/3 of the company was laid off.
Posted by: David Parmet | March 15, 2006 at 05:10 PM
Well.... I don't work in a corporate office, but I do conduct corporate off-sites in the outdoors.
One that came straight from hell was one where we were supposed to have a rock climbing and rappelling session in a remotish location.
It was a one day thing, and I guess absolutely everything that could go wrong managed to do so.
To begin with, the group that was supposed to arrive at 7:30am arrived at 11:45am, because some of the participants "didn't come on time" turns out that they didn't WAKE up on time.
Then the guys that got bored waiting for them opened beer cans to make the wait bearable.
By the time they reached location for breakfast, we had some of them visibly walking diagonal, in spite of strict instructions that drinking wouldn't be allowed until the adventure activities were done.
Then came the complaints when instructors wouldn't allow the drunks to climb up the mountain, and a couple of incidents when one particularly aggressive participant (no doubt heavily encouraged by the beer) physically assaulted an instructor.
That made some of the women so disgusted that they wanted to return at once.
Meanwhile, a bunch of adventurous drunks managed to vanish off somewhere and there was a wholesale hunt for them. They weren't found until it was over 2 hours after the scheduled time for returning home. No wonder they weren't found - they had gone to a resort 2 km away and booked a room for the day.
The whole fiasco ended with the general manager driving to the location on the complaints of the female members, among whom one had also been harrassed by the drunks and whipping all the asses involved.
A record breaking 37 out of 83 participants were drunk. Out of which 2 remained missing until the end of the day, 4 hired a vehicle from the resort, banged it somewhere and insisted it should be covered in their day's charges for the programme, one girl got harassed, the co-ordinator was willing to break down in tears, and my staff was wondering when or if any activity was ever to be done.
Needless to say, the group never did any activities at all, as their co-ordinator never mangaged to get them together, even for returning home.
Also needless to say, I never want to go through another day like this. The only good thing that happened that the official decision was that my company was in no way to blame for the fiasco, and we did get paid on schedule.
Posted by: Vidyut Kale | August 16, 2007 at 04:34 AM