To hate having to do a 'fun quiz' every week at work, and other corporate rubbish?

[corporaterubbish]

Every Monday we have a team meeting, there's around 15 of us. Each week someone gets picked to have to create and present a 'fun quiz', and then we all get picked on randomly to say the answer. I dread it each week, a lot of the time I don't know the answers, I don't know if it's because I don't have a lot in common with my colleagues.

Then we have monthly meetings with the whole department, and someone is asked at random to present a short presentation about themselves/their life. Usually filled with pictures of extensive travelling and running marathons/excelling at tennis/hiking.

There is a weekly happy hour in the office with champagne (?), wine and beer. Then there are monthly socials we are all encouraged to attend. If I'm in the office when one of these socials is taking place, it is pretty impossible to get out of.

Everyone around me seems to lap all of this up and find it fun, and I feel so miserable in comparison but AIBU to hate all of this?!

My sister did just that. The topic was "my Epiphany moment" (I know, right?). She talked about her time spent in ICU on a ventilator and ended the talk with "and that's when I realised life's too short to put up with nonsense from others", and sat back down. She's never been asked to attend, or do, "personal presentations" since.

I was going to say this. And instead of pictures of trekking, mountain biking and far flung holiday destination pictures, you could show pictures of piles of washing up, piles of ironing, the kids having a tantrum, or you sitting on the sofa in front of Homes Under the Hammer in your PJs

This is what I did last weekend, I then had some porridge, I then left the bowl all weekend so it was like concrete when I came to wash up, I then went shopping. I then watched Netflix. This is my interesting life! Enjoy

That's exactly what I'd do. Just take the piss out of this genre but in a way that the company can't do anything about.

And those utter cringe things asking people to talk about a meaningful song and it's just some mainstream corporate drivel. It doesn't work. It was meaningful to them but you're not allowed to say "It's a shite song though". Urgh, god, I wish I could opt out of the workforce.

Make sure your meaningful song is an awful ear worm that people wont be able to get out their heads, like Agadoo or something. Its meaningful to you because you like pineapples.

Or really ramp it up with "the wheels on the bus" and continue to hum it everytime you walk past anyone who was in the meeting.

YANBU. Forced socialising can be awkward and uncomfortable for a lot of people. I think it's unfair when events are in the office or tagged onto the last hour of the day so nobody can leave or get out of it. It's never a positive bonding experience when all you can think about is how much longer until you can get away.

Sounds like a sales office in the 80's:)
They must have a good budget to afford all the booze. You don't have to drink it

Socials are OK, you could pop in and show willing then leaving after about 20 mins citing ' meeting someone for cocktails' to get out of drinking/ hanging about.

The presentation sounds grim, sounds like Teddy for the weekend and parents outdoing each other with pics of Teddy at legoland or meeting mick jagger.

Just say you haven't done slides. Who does slides? :) Say you live in x, bit of an introvert, and enjoy xxx about your job.

I have never been asked to do one of the short presentations, though if I was asked to and minded as the sister of @GotABeatForYouMama was, would probably talk about the ancestors of mine who died in the Holocaust.

As for a song- 'the man who couldn't give a ' by the Super Furry Animals might be my choice.

Is this the kind of stuff that gets taught using university nowadays?

I had an acting team leader once, not long out of university, and she woukd do a quiz for the team every meeting. It wasn't a fun quiz, though. It was product and service based. She even bought a small plastic trophy and it was handed to the winner to display on their desk till the next quiz. It went down like a lead balloon with those of us who'd been in the workplace for years and those who got sick of if being treated like we were 5 years old.

How grim. I’m so glad I left working for other people for all this stuff went mainstream.

I hated the Christmas party so much, I used to volunteer to organise it ( quite successfully, surprisingly. ) That way I had an excuse for not having to endure long conversations or worse with anyone, because I had to keep checking that everything was alright with the bar, and the band , and the kitchen etc etc.

Leave I used to work somewhere like that it was horrendous so I left.

You might not enjoy taking part in these events, but I have to think your company/employer is trying to establish or re-establish connections between the team members, particularly if members joined the team and/or company during lockdown.

Do you ever watch the quiz show on Monday nights on BBC2 called Only Connect? At the start of each show, Victoria introduces the players with a 'fun fact' about them. I have no idea if they are true or not but some of them are out there and I'd say they're pretty hard to prove 100% accurate. Perhaps try and find something like that as your 'fun fact'. I'd even try to teach myself how to use Paintshop or similar so that I could put myself in some highly unlikely situations - like meeting President Biden or Zelensky (very unlikely) so along the lines of Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump meeting Nixon. All done with green screen, smoke and mirrors.

My previous workplace spent loads of money having external consultants run, analyse and advise on an annual employee satisfaction survey. Every year this showed that lots of us felt overworked, were not happy with work/life balance and were considering leaving in the next 12 month. Every year the actions advised involved teambuilding exercises, away days, 'bringing your whole self to work' activities etc etc. Which actually meant event worse work/life balance etc (other than for the few people who actually liked this crap). Interestingly, the department that scored best in every area of employee satisfaction was directed by a sensible woman who treated staff fairly and respected that they had lives outside work. Very occasionally someone would point out that maybe we should look at what X department were doing differently and they were basically told they didn't know what they were talking about and clearly that department was totally unlike any other and could not be replicated. That department was eventually merged with another and the sensible director was pushed out.

Hahaha that reminds me, we DO have a 'teddy for the weekend' thing too! We have a company bear we have to take with us whenever we go travel for work, and we have to take a picture of it there (e.g. if the meeting is in Paris, there'll be a picture of the teddy next to the Eiffel Tower). I wish I was making this up...

That made me laugh out loud. meaningful to you because you like pineapples Brilliant! Delivered with a totally straight face.

I'm glad a lot of you agree with me. The things in isolation are fine, but all of them together is too much. Everytime I'm in the office I feel like I'm making excuses for why I don't want to attend things after work, I'm exhausted with a long commute, I want to just go home!

Everyone at works seems to eat it all up though. I'm not sure if it's because I'm from a wildly different background to them all, I'm from a working class background and have had a lot of hardship in my life and so I wouldn't dream of asking someone in a work context to give a talk about their personal life.

WTAF?!

Do you work in a nursery?!?!

I am retired. I don't miss work. This thread has reminded me again why that is. Sympathies.

I'll be thinking of this thread the next time I see a homeworker on Mumsnet being told to 'get back to work'.

They used to do this sort of thing at my old workplace. It was painful. The brown nosers loved it though, a good chance to do some serious sucking up.

We had a "sunshine corner" in one place I worked. I only ever thought about it with expletives.

It makes a difference if you feel like you don't belong and having a tough background is good for resiliance but not always for confidence.

Exactly this, seeing adult's behaving like preforming seal's just to be noticed. Nauseating 🤢.

This thread is hilarious. Op, you YANBU.

Oh god, we did the “do a couple of slides on your life, your school, university, work, family, hobbies etc” I was so appalled I asked the person doing the rota if they’d put me last.

it fizzled out half way through so I never got to do mine. I’m taking voluntary redundancy at the end of April after 37 years and 7 months of this shit, and I won’t look back.

I actually like the idea of this OP but obviously I don’t know what the people you work with are like. I’d have a giggle with all of these activities but I can really appreciate that many people would rather saw their own arm off than do any of these activities.