Before
Today there is a team building exercise at a place downtown. I have chosen not to go. I have a list of treasons. Mostly, it is a hassle and I just don’t want to deal with ti right now. I have been working flat out for a while and today, I was hoping that it would be quite.

I got to work and found out that event does not last all day. It is from 10:00 to 14:00 or so. Sounds like a plan. I still do not want to go. I found out that it is a buffet. That was the icing in the cake of me not wanting to go. There is a primal problem with not knowing what you are putting in your mouth while you eat. It has a tendency to kill the appetite. This happens to me all the time when eating at buffets. It drives me nuts

It looks like only the old company team will go to the team building thing. I believe all the new company people will hang around. The productivity of the morning was a bit below normal I would say. I can’t blame anyone.

A couple have asked discreetly if the powers that be expect people to come back to work after the event. I’ve heard that some people asked if they could just take the day, or at least the afternoon off. By this point in the morning, I was pretty sure I would be here all day

A friend called me and tried to convince me to come. It is nice to be asked.

While roaming around the halls, there is a particularly high level of chatter today. To be expected. Our old company always let people carry over a week of vacation. The new company does not do this. They say it is to get people to take vacations. That’s fine. This has caused people to take the last two weeks of the year off on mass. I’ll be here fo4r all but the week between Christmas and New year’s day. Thus, this is the last day for an abnormally large number of people.

During
About 9:30 people all gathered round, made a bunch of noise and filed out the door. I had been in our production area a bit before and it was empty. They all gathered in one room and had a little before we leave get together. That made sense once I thought about it. People are just going to stand around and pretend to make plans for rides and whatnot.

Me and another guy worked on some virtualization stuff while everyone was gone. It was kind of nice. Got quite a bit done. Still managed to not get what I wanted. It turns out I’m going to have to wait for more information.

Someone texted me about some Christmas bonus activity. Nice.. Wont turn that down. Need to pay off some bills for sure. next year is going to be even worse because of Health care costs. We will be paying a good deal of our costs next year. This is going to hurt.

After
I was not the most productive person today. I have to admit it. I did get some audiocast listening done while hacking away today. Normally, I get interrupted so much that I don’t make it though many episodes.

Someone was making a loud clicking noise. I wandered around looking for them, but found no one to strangle. Could have rounded out an otherwise excellent afternoon.

Normally, by 17:00, most of the company is still plugging away at their desks. Today, however, the place was a ghost town. It was me and three other folks all heading for the door more or less a bit after 17:15. That is how it should be dang it. I hope the culture changes a bit at our company. People need lives outside of work too.