As long as I’m getting paid you can send me anywhere to do anything.

But expect me to go somewhere without being paid and it better be something I’m interested in and that I don’t have other stuff I would rather use my time to catch up on. I have better stuff to do at home than to just hang out and not be productive while also losing a day of wages.

But if it’s paid I would greatly appreciate the stress free day.

I can’t think of a more stressful work day than to see coworkers, in a new environment, with no way to immediately go home(or not compensated for my travel), unscheduled and unannounced, and being ordered to have fun and be social without breaking the social contract of the office.

I will be sick that day.

If it’s paid we can go to Chuck-E-Cheese for all I care

If I had to attend events off the clock, my union president would eat nails and spit rust.

In that circumstance, a periodic board game day might be better.

Its social, but much more relevant, and gets new ideas into the team, or gives them ways to try shit out together.

Plus, professional game designers are the one group of people some if the denser and more experimental board games would be a team building rather than team sundering exercise for.

Definitely the worst part of working is to give up 8+ hours of your day. It doesn’t matter if it’s a trip or staying in the chair looking at a computer. You still took away 8+ hours of my life.

In fact, when I signed up for the job, I did so wanting to be hours sitting in a chair looking at the computer. Not for “socializing” or whatever. I would prefer another day in the chair, since that trip will just give me less time to meet my deadlines.

There are two types of people in the world

There are people who want to socialize with their coworkers, bond with them, have friendships with them, etc.

And there are people who just work here, man. They show up everyday, spend 8 hours doing their job, collect their paycheck every 2 weeks, and don’t want to spend a moment more than they need to at work and or think about their job or coworkers on their days off.

Field trips, team building days, etc. are great for the first type of person, they’re torture for the second.

I’m the second type of person. I don’t, overall, dislike my coworkers. I’ll joke around with them, I think they’re mostly all nice and decent people, maybe even above average. But at its core, the nature of my relationship with them is that I get paid to work with them, and that is plenty enough reason to be friendly (though not necessarily friends with) them. I don’t need to go get a beer with them after work, or go bowling or whatever with them to build a bond with them. My bond with them is that if I do my job and they do their job, we both get paid and can go do whatever the hell we want to do off the clock, either with each other if they’re one of the rare people who manage to make the jump from being a work friend to being a regular friend, or separately if all we really have in common is that we work together. I have plenty of friends and hobbies and such that I don’t need to seek them out at work, and I prefer it that way, my professional life and private life don’t really need to touch.

I don’t want birthday cards from my coworkers, I don’t want to contribute anything to the office Christmas party (I work for my county government, I really don’t think we should even have an office Christmas party) and when they’re taking up a collection for a coworker who is sick or about to have a baby or whatever, my only thought is “how 'bout they just pay us enough that we don’t have to do this?”

So if it’s decided that I don’t need to work for a day, I’d rather just be home. Or have the option to go in and work to get caught up/get ahead on my work in exchange for overtime while all the type-A, middle management, people-people, chatty Kathy, office gossip, busybody types are out of the office doing whatever.

I certainly don’t want to come in on my day off to deal with any of that. Those days off are the reason I work, so that I can enjoy the rest of my time.

Two particular examples I recall that ground my gears.

I used to work in a warehouse. The company used to do two Christmas parties, one for the office staff, one for the warehouse employees. Usually the office staff would get treated to dinner at a restaurant after work. For us warehouse people, they would usually get us a catered lunch. Never anything particularly special, but at least I didn’t have to pack a lunch that day. One year they decided that they’d take us warehouse plebs out to a nice steakhouse for dinner. I declined. I was busting my ass all day in a warehouse, I’d be gross and sweaty and want to go home to shower and change after work. I had time to do that, we got off at 5, and the dinner wasn’t until I think 7, but after dealing with almost an hour of rush hour traffic, and being tired from working all day, I really didn’t want to get dressed again and go back out. And to top it off, I was one of only like 3 people in the warehouse who spoke decent English, and the other two were 2 or 3 times my age, and one was my boss. The rest mostly spoke Spanish, and they were nice enough, but I couldn’t really have enough of a conversation with them to even determine if we even had anything in common to talk about, much less actually talk to them about it. About all we could manage is “hey, can you go grab this box for me?” or showing each other funny videos and laughing.

To me that sounded like I was going to spend a couple hours sitting mostly in silence with people chatting in Spanish around me.

And of course, they were paying for food, but not for drinks. If I’m going to a nice steakhouse, I’m going to want at least a beer, glass of wine, or cocktail with my dinner, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to pay anything out of pocket to attend a work function.

I also really don’t get the appeal of a steakhouse, don’t get me wrong, I like steak, but I can make a steak with some sides as good or better as any steakhouse at home for half the cost. Steak isn’t complicated.

My boss was surprised I didn’t want to go. I’m surprised that anyone wanted to go. I’d rather they have me a few bucks to order some pizzas, grab a six pack, and stay home with my wife (who was invited to this as well, I asked her if she wanted to go, she felt the same way) watching Netflix.

The next one is more recent. My current job has been on a big mental health thing lately. We have to do a mandatory training thing a couple times a year, usually it’s pretty bullshit, but at least there’s a thing veneer of “,you need to do this to keep your required certifications, even if none of it actually applies to what we do”

But this last time they decided to do a “wellness retreat”

Which consisted of us mostly sitting in an auditorium listening to about 4 different speakers talking about mental health, suicide prevention, fitness and healthy eating, etc. and a guided meditation thing, doing a middle school science class egg drop experiment as a team building exercise, and a Cornhole tournament. We had to provide our own lunches, and they had therapy dogs visit us, not really giving any presentation or anything just kind of there and we could pet them during our lunch break.

Half of the presentations felt like I was watching an ad for these people’s businesses, and the other half were just boring rehashes of things we’ve all heard a thousand times before interspersed with some sad stories.

I had to give up my day off for that. I wanted to flip a fucking table when they had the nerve to mention work-life ballance. And half of us are night shifters, and they never schedule any of these things overnight, so it was downright insulting when they talked about how important it is to get enough sleep.

And I don’t even want to play Cornhole when I’m drunk with my friends I actually want to be around, I really don’t want to play it with a bunch of coworkers totally sober.

I got overtime pay for it, but I gladly would have paid that much out of my own pocket to skip it.

If you want to surprise your employees, let them leave early (with pay) on a Friday, hand out gift cards for takeout or a movie or something, buy them pizza, or better yet, just give them all a raise or a bonus. If they want to go hang out together and bond, they can go do that with their extra money after they leave work early on a Friday, maybe invite them to join you for whatever you’re doing. If they don’t, they can go enjoy life on their own terms.

If you gave a person a choice at the beginning of their job between a day off or an office field trip, most would probably just choose an extra day off.

Then why would you force anything else? You know what they’d pick but you’re still considering forcing some bullshit holiday? I’ve worked both type of places and I’ll take the day off every single time.

A truly diverse office will be full of very different types of people - people that’d rather be with their kids, older people that won’t enjoy the same things, introverts, people keeping their mental disorders secret, etc etc. Statistically, probably some women that are uncomfortable around some of the men because of some shit they overheard.

You don’t know what’s best for every single one of these individuals. They do.

There’s not a straightforward answer to this because it’s far too context dependent, and even a CEO at a small company won’t have absolute control over the culture of that company; I’ve seen company culture turn from amazing to toxic after losing only a couple key employees (good managers are gold dust).

To draw a comparison: staff pizza parties are so widely scoffed at not because people hate pizza, but because, when set against a backdrop of employees not actually being respected or valued, it makes them feel worse. Good will can’t be bought, whether by pizza, extra days off, or field trips. Some of those things can help, but much more important is the cumulative culture that’s built at the company.

Most decisions like discretionarily giving someone time off to look after family are going to be made at a level lower than CEO. Sometimes great policy ideas arise from a great manager using their discretion to make a sensible call, and then going “maybe we could put [idea] in place for future”.

An envelope with cash!

I would want to accommodate all kinds of people and situations.

• Off-work activities should be optional - technically and practically (no or little social pressure)
• On-work activities should be optional, possibly with a little push depending on goals and hoped for gains, and be introduced with context of what they are useful for or intended for

Due to personality and consequential social anxiety, I’m more sensitive than most people. If there’s open communication and accommodation to all parties, and a shared goal, it should be possible to find a good way.

Activities may be for team-building, to visit places for reference, or other activities that may have more or less direct usefulness for projects.

If it’s an on-work-hour activity, I don’t think there’s a need for alternative compensation. Either you join or do your normal work.

Off-hour work has a more informal tone and should have more distance from concrete projects.

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I love your rationale and agree. You seem like a good leader and I hope you get there some day

Instead of coming up with cheap gimmicks for your workers in order to save yourself and the company money while playing PR games with your workforce … just pay them all a bonus, give them time off and let them all decide what they want to do with their time and money.

Everyone share the same hobby? Is it a paid or during work hours?

Make it during work hours and something all of the people can enjoy. We once had a brunch and then went to a local Madame Tussaud’s.

For a gaming company I’d suggest some gaming museum or tech fair.

As a worker‘s perspective, just make sure it’s on the clock and during work hours.