Since I have secured a new job and subsequently had a heart-to-heart with my boss wherein I had to honestly explain why I was unwilling to stay in my current position a minute longer than the requisite two weeks (“Well…truth be told, yesterday when I was away from my desk, it was because I had to go cry hysterically in private”), I feel it’s fair game for me to say that my work environment was toxic. That my disappearing for an hour to sob in the privacy of a bathroom stall was not regarded as unusual and was, instead, greeted with a commiserating and empathetic “I know. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to do the same,” from my boss is a pretty good indicator. And while I would love to sink my teeth into this topic, delving deeper is probably ill advised. Suffice it to say, the last year has been hell on Earth for everyone involved and I am not the only one who suffered a meltdown (three out of a team of six).
Anyway, even if there are work spies reading this,* that my particular area was deemed toxic by employees and employer alike is not news to anybody. In the past few months, in an attempt to address the situation, our group has been sent to several “team building” workshops put on by various and sundry motivational speakers, none of whom did anything to challenge my perception that corporate workshop facilitators are manic lunatics from the same alien race as Tom Cruise.
The first workshop was a full two days, conducted by a woman who looked like a parody of a Russian figure skating coach: brassy dye job, blue eyeshadow, stripes of blush over leathery smoker’s skin, and both days she wore 80s era outfits with hefty shoulder pads and some kind of animal print. Her frumpy appearance was incongruous with her boundless energy and her habit of clapping and exclaiming with rabid glee, “Yaaay! Good for YOU [insert name], GOOD SHARING!” every time someone responded to one of her questions. She also responded to each personal revelation by oversharing information from her own life so that by the end of the first hour, we knew that her father never loved her, she had gone through a bitter divorce in the early 90s, and had, at one point, declared bankruptcy and lost her condo only to rebound by making, “scads of money” and marrying a man who knows how to “push her buttons.”
The purpose of this particular workshop was to get our “colours done.” Somebody somewhere has broken down the 6 billion some odd personalities of the world into four colours: blues (empathetic, sensitive), golds (organized/Type A), oranges (adventurous, outgoing), and greens (logical, analytical). The goal of the workshop was for us to use our individual colours to weave a “plaid.”
I am pretty sure this type of thing is designed specifically to torment people like me who are compulsive people pleasers suffering from a conflicting congenital cynicism.
Highlights of this workshop included: Watching a video of the fish throwing people at Pike Place Market and preparing a presentation on how having fun increases productivity; me getting a stern lecture on how I couldn’t be both blue and orange, nor an extrovert and an introvert, and having to pick one of each**; my co-worker being forced to don a tiara and wave a glittery “blue fairy” plastic wand and give us examples of how her “blue” personality is a gift (sadly, readers, I tell you this with no hyperbole whatsoever); and a dramatic demonstration wherein Oversharing Figure Skating Lady broke a single stick across her purple leopard print clad knee, but when she bundled the sticks and tied them with blue, orange, green, and gold yarn, the sticks could not be broken.
If I’m honest with myself, I must admit that most of my contempt for this workshop stems from being publicly rebuked for having equal portions of seemingly conflicting personality types.
The other workshop of note was the Laughter Workshop. Yes. A workshop to teach us how to laugh. I actually liked this facilitator because he was so good-hearted and well-intentioned that he was oblivious to how his unbridled enthusiasm was often overwhelming for many of us. You have to feel at once sorry for and touched by a man who wears a happy face tie and clown nose and bounds into a room full of hateful co-workers to force them to laugh together. You know, in the same way you at once love and are anxious about a joyful labradoodle with muddy paws who’s been set loose on a cocktail party.
Anyway, I say forced to laugh because that’s what it was. First we had a five-minute warm-up, where we had to clutch at our stomachs, saying/pretend laughing “Ha-ha-ha” (in a tenor), “Hee-hee-hee” (in a falsetto), and “HO-HO-HO” (in a booming bass), and finish each round of fake laughing by waving our hands in the air, jumping up and down, and shouting “Yaaaaaaaaaayyyyyy!” This was followed by several different laughing exercises that included having to waddle around the room like penguins and tittering, pretending we were chickens and “Bok-bok-bok” laughing, and grabbing our bellies so that we could feel them shaking like bowls full of jelly when we chortled “Ho-ho-ho!” like Santa Claus. The exercises culminated in knee slapping and a crescendo of “Ah-ha-ha-ha! AH-HA-HA-HAAAAAAAAA! BWAH-HA-HA!!!” laughing.
Of all the things I could say at this point, I will instead say “Goodbye old job.”
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*I am not being paranoid when I refer to “work spies,” as the public service actually has a department whose duties include reading e-mails and the like, which I found out when I had lunch the other day with one of that department’s employees.
While we’re on the subject, Dear Work Spies: That time I Googled “Pete Burns pussy lips,” I was not being pervy, but was instead trying to see Pete Burns’ botched lip implants and the resulting pus-filled blisters and only realized how “pus-sy” and “pussy” lips are interchangeable after my unfortunate search results appeared. Please remove any resulting red flags off of my account.
**Note that Oversharing Figure Skating Lading was not a trained psychologist. Also note that I filled out the questionnaires honestly and that’s how my results came out. This sort of blurring the lines is, apparently, unacceptable in Four Colour World. (I chose blue and introvert, for the record.)
