My company just rolled out “Team Building Thursdays,” which means an hour every week are now blocked off for activities like trivia. Don’t get me wrong, I see the value of team bonding, but with 15 accounts to manage and deadlines breathing down my neck, it’s hard not to feel resentful. I spend the entire session thinking about emails piling up. Has anyone else dealt with this? Do these activities actually help? How do you balance participation without falling behind?

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Yikessss that sounds super stressful. Is there space to communicate with your team/department lead about the cadence? I definitely think there’s value in this sort of stuff, so maybe you could shift to every other week or shorter/snackable activities.

These sorts of initiatives have good intentions and should welcome feedback that will ultimately make them more impactful. I’d recommend framing the push as a build vs a complaint.

In the long run I really do feel like those kinds of activities make for a better working environment. However it can be a lot at first to get used to when you aren’t used to having an hour every week taken from you. Agree that it could benefit from feedback into something that works better.

I would accept the free hour of "work" and let the company deal with the consequences of work slowing down. How bad could it be to just take on hour off? I think if your team is as stressed out as you are, it could be good for everyone to take a load off. Hope they're giving y'all some drinks to take the edge off too (and hopefully this is at like 4pm so you don't have to go back to work after?)

Don't attend unless there's food. What time of day is trivia? Request the session happen at lunchtime.

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