Ice Breaker WHY?

[Icebreakhell]

A work meeting next week has scheduled a 1 hour!! Icebreaker where we’ve been asked to bring a photo or object that is meaningful and talk about it for 2 minutes!!

What sort of arsehole invented this stuff. I’m not an oversharer and I’m working on my weekend at the minute as we’re so busy. I font have time for this bullshit.

Feel like getting out if it will cause more stress than sitting there cringing, slowly dying and not listening to a word others stay as I’m do mortified.

Surely this sort of thing is now being discouraged by HR?

We used to have this kind of bullsh*t where I used to work. The irony was that the senior manager who organised all of this caring and sharing was a bully and a sociopath and since being moved on they are now a non-executive manager at an NHS Trust.

For some people, "only 2 minutes" causes a lot of anxiety and stress and can completely over-shadow the course itself.

This kind of crap "may" be acceptable on "people facing" courses like hospitality etc where personal interaction skills are more or less essential as such jobs are aimed more at extroverts.

But if it's something like an inheritance tax course, where many of the attendees will be introverted/quieter types, if not ND, then it's completely unnecessary, pointless, stressful and a waste of time.

I just wish that when I was younger and had more confidence that I'd just refuse to do such nonsense as it just caused me so much stress and anxiety that sometimes the whole course was wasted as I was so disturbed by the whole thing, especially when you're sat there knowing you're going to have to "perform" and getting more and more stressed and uptight about it.

If we want to just sit there, listen, concentrate on the course content itself, why the hell not just let us? Why are we made to feel responsible for other peoples' experiences and entertainment during a professional work course!

Oooh, I’ve done this one. I think it was to demonstrate that everyone interprets instructions differently and if you tell 30 people to draw a pig, you’ll get 30 different pigs.

Absolute infantilising, patronising bollocks.

Yep ... also apparently showed what type of person you are. If you drew a curly tail you're dependable and loyal ... or something along those lines.

Photo of your laptop/workstation? Tell them it's hard to focus on anything meaningful other than work given you're snowed under and working weekends. All you are focusing on in the meeting is what you could be doing work wise.

Oh God yes. I'd never get on a chair with my bad knees.
At one we had to line up according to age and it was then I discovered I was the oldest person at work. I can't say I was thrilled.

Poor you!! It's like the event organisers have forgotten it's not the 1990s anymore 😬

@Badbadbunny too bloody right. Spot on! (I'm completely triggered remembering my past experiences of this kind of BS event 🤣)

I totally agree with @Badbadbunny . I had a week long course last year and the first day was taken up with silly games and activities. It stressed me out so much that I contemplated making up all sorts of lies to get out of the rest of the week.

Fuck that, I’m autistic and I couldn’t stare into my own husband’s eyes for 15 seconds! I’d genuinely have to refuse.

I’m doing a lot of Teams training at the moment and every session, we have to get round the group saying our preferred name (sometimes pronouns but everyone ignores that one!), office location and how long we’ve been doing the job. Except that the group is usually the same and only the trainer is different, so I’m pretty sure I could do the introductions for everyone else by now! It can take up to 40 mins to do the hello, this is what the day will look like, everyone introduce themselves part before the training even begins 🙈.

In the OP’s case though I’d bring a picture of my dog and I could definitely talk about him for 2 mins although I doubt anyone else would be interested.

But why? Why do you (not you personally, I appreciate you’re not HR for us all) make us attend these utterly pointless and time wasting events? Why do we have to abandon really urgent stuff that has deadlines, to sit in a room and draw pigs for three hours? Could the message not have been sent in an email? If you don’t trust us to understand the concept without getting the crayons out, then wtf did you hire us?

The aim will be to transition you away from the day to day work and to get to know other people better Again, why? What’s the point? We have to work twice as hard to catch up with the work when we get back to our desks, because our managers will have all missed the memo that all work was cancelled for the afternoon. And I don’t need to get to know my colleagues better. If I work with them, I already know that Phil will take credit for everyone’s ideas, Julie can’t be trusted around the biscuit tin if there are jammy dodgers in there and Millie has just broken up with her boyfriend. Why do I need to know that Geoff on the 7th floor has astroturf instead of grass and once met some obscure prog rock band in a lift? How does this help me do my job better? Is it just to tick boxes? Is it a tax write off? Why are you doing it to us??? 😭

The trainer doesn't have control over whether you actually look into someone's eyes.

I wish someone had told me this when I started, now done loads of breakout sessions where I and the other person have just done our own thing.

Totally agree, also I don’t need help getting to know people if I want to. I am not a baby!

You could take your payslip as your meaningful item and say it reminds you why you’re sitting through this crap.

What if you drew the police?? 😂😂😂

This was literally going to be my suggestion 🤣

I'd refuse to do this, utter bollocks

There was a recent thread where the op had to come up with one of these tasks, against her better judgement it has to be said, and was looking for ideas.
I wonder what she went with in the end?
It's impossible to come up with something everyone finds palatable.
In my opinion they're all shit!!

I would refuse point blank to do this, I don't want to break a leg - and I never take off my shoes in front of anyone, I hate my feet.

I heard a theory once that the point of ice breakers is to unite everyone because they hate the ice breaker. No one's going to chat about the picture of your holiday at the coffee break, but you might have a chat about how awful doing the ice breaker was.

Take a set of big headphones and explain how important they are to you when you don't want to have to participate in ice-breaker events. Then pick them up and put them on. Job done.😂

Brilliant!

Thanks everyone. Seems these things are almost universally unpopular. We don’t need an icebreaker (certainly not an hour long), most of us vaguely know each other through work. There are a lot of useful conversations we could have in the 3 hour meeting, 1/3 of which will now be wasted with this shite.

I wish I had the balls

I used to run a training course & at the beginning I’d say how much I hated icebreakers myself, so instead of doing one we’d have a slightly longer break mid-morning so we all had time to chat to each other over a cup of tea. Everyone was unanimously relieved, and I used to get people effusively thanking me on their feedback forms!