With the recent events this week, this seems like a lifetime ago but a bit more than a week ago we celebrated our yearly personnel party at work. Traditionally we close the firm each year a full day and spend an entire day with all the colleagues, from cleaning lady, the warehouse clerk to the directors, and we do team building games at a surprise location and spend the evening with good drinks and food.
The team who organizes, went nuts this year: physical gathering, virtual gathering, no gathering, virtual, social distanced gathering, ... In the end we had a virtual day. We closed as always, Corona pandemic or not... especially in these days that we are all condemned to homeworking , we need to connect more. But I did wonder what a full day of online meetings would be like. A virtual drink is fun for a bit but a full day... a bit too much probably?
We started the day with an optional breakfast meeting. We all got a breakfast box delivered at home for 2-3 people. Unfortunately that came a little late, so I had already finished my breakfast with the boys after which I joined the online meeting. Up to 30 people were in there and a lot of us had dressed up as requested in an animal theme or at least were having fun with changing video call backgrounds with the most remarkable animals behind us. The conversation dropped dead now and then however.
Then we had our usual morning presentations where we had made retrospectives per department on the previous year. It was quite funny but also emotional since we were also saying goodbye to some departments due to global restructurings.
After an exact 4 min toilet break we launched a quiz together. It took about 20 minutes before all 84 of us had resolved technical issues to log on, see questions and register votes. But then we were launched in a multiple screen quiz where there was additional interaction with another chat screen on which we all commented, goofed, cheered on the leadership board etc. And yours truly ended on a spectacular 5th place. Woohoo. Truly fun. And unlike a non-Corona year we enjoyed being warm and dry inside while it was pouring rain outside.
In the afternoon we competed in smaller groups in an online escape room which was incredible hard. The best group only reached challenge 8 out of 15...my group stranded on challenge 5. I wish we could have tried a little longer at least.
And then it was time to get ready for the last workshop that we all looked forward too. We had all received a box with little alcohol bottles, citrus fruits, a cocktail shaker , some glasses (most of us had a broken one in the box as the packaging wasn't quite suited for sending fragile goods) and an egg (also broken). But hey, not too hard to replace some broken glasses and eggs so before we knew it we were pressing juices and mixing them with gin or rum or beer or ... creating multiple cocktails in too little time. Gooffy times :p.
Time flew and I had to slow down on drinking so I took all drinks for our closing presentations, the celebration of those that have a company anniversary, retirement or got newly hired, the announcement of our annual gifts etc. All of that came even in this virtual version with a lot of howling and cheering and clapping just as always.
What can I say...I spent about 10 hours before my computer screen (consciously never at my desk as this was a non working day) and time flew by. I hardly found the time to use the bathroom and it was not a single moment boring.
I missed the spontaneous conversations I would have had on a regular company day with people I don't regularly get to talk to. This virtual setting didn't allow for some casual chit chat. But I did feel the company vibe and the team spirit and I had loads of fun.
Oh and yes, the cocktails were good ;).
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