How We’re Having Fun at Work

Interesting things have been happening at work lately, thanks to the FISH! Philosophy.

The first week they announced it, we were told there would be 5 weeks of activities and that we could use casual clothes for its duration. I groaned because I don’t have too many casual clothes. I need to buy more jeans for women!

Squares of paper the size of large post its were mysteriously placed under our name plates. They were of different colours; mine was green, while my seat mate’s was literally a yellow post it.

A few days after that, we got an email instructing us to look for all the people who had the same colour post it as us, then call an adjudicator to check our attendance once we were complete, that there would be around 20 of us. The floor erupted in a flurry of activity, with everyone walking and calling out for team mates, waving around their squares of paper. This was the first time that I saw my office, which usually has everyone seated in front of their PC’s, in an uproar. Our office occupies two floors and has over 300 employees, so it wasn’t that easy, but our team managed to find everyone and was the first to converge, so we got top points that week.

We were informed that this would be our team for the entire duration of the FISH! activities, and possibly for other company events forever and ever. I initially knew only about 4 people in my team, so I suppose this was a good opportunity to get to know new people.

Sure enough, there were other activities. We played darts, dressed up in our team colour for pictures, had a scavenger hunt for A-Z objects all around the office, had a guessing game where you have to guess the word by asking only yes or no questions, and blindfolded pong (like beer pong minus the beer plus blindfold).

There was one activity which involved upper level management people making random surveys with questions like what would you wish for if you had 3 wishes, then they had to pose together for a picture. My teammate came up with this (I handed him the flower) and won a prize for best picture. 😀

We even had an update meeting where they asked us to look under our seats for a prize. There wasn’t one under mine, but I spotted one on the empty seat in our row, and it contained a couple of movie vouchers. Yay! 😀

Then last week was appreciation week, when our managers gave us notes of appreciation and treats (our team got Koi bubble tea). I thought this was really touching because in our line of work, we rarely get verbally appreciated for what we do. Usually for every 9 right things and 1 wrong thing we do, we would only ever hear about the 1 wrong thing.

We were also promised a buffet lunch “with a twist.” I wondered what the twist was and guessed that since it was appreciation week, maybe the big bosses would be serving us in costume. I was right! 🙂

The funny thing was that I was just walking through the pantry after getting something from HR, when all of a sudden one of the big bosses announced to me, “So, Heidee, you’re the first one we’re serving today!” I said, “What? No, I was just passing through! Has this even been announced yet?” Turns out it wasn’t, but they were ready to start, and since they were all insistent, I shrugged and said, “Sure, why not?” and grabbed a plate, which they promptly started to fill up. The meal was delicious, by the way. I especially loved the cheesecake and eclair.

I appreciate our upper level management for putting this program into place. Work has been more fun with play involved, and they have definitely made our day. 🙂