Teambuilding

 

One of the unnoticed benefits of Coronavirus and social distancing has been the complete demise of Team Building courses. For those of you lucky enough to never have experienced a team building course, I should explain.

When the management of large corporations realise the business isn’t performing as well as they hoped, and they have no real idea how to fix things, they send the whole work force on a team building course. It’s intended to boost morale and foster team spirit. Attendance is mandatory for employees because “you’re really going to enjoy it and come back a better person”.

Team building courses are an export from America. This country has contributed many wonderful inventions such as rock ‘n’ roll, spaghetti westerns (OK most were made in Europe), the personal computer and spandex. To keep the balance they have also inflicted some monstrous crap on the rest of us, and team building courses are high in the top 10.

The courses are often a 2 – 3-day residential programme, so it intrudes on your personal time. The one possible saving grace of the whole sorry event is that they might have a free bar. If it doesn’t, then you really have been screwed.

So, you get to spend three days in the company of your fellow employees. You already suspect that half of them are dicks and a team building course is the perfect stage for them to prove it.

The course is always run by a team of insanely cheerful idiots. They encourage you to exchange hugs and high fives and bond with your colleagues. They love an inspiring theme song and they probably have a dance routine for you to learn. They repeatedly use annoying buzz-phrases like “positive mental attitude,” “let’s deep dive this,” and “winning is baked into our DNA”. I suspect that most team building organisers eventually end as members of whacky religious cults.

The courses always involve a series of pointless exercises. A favourite is to take turns falling backwards off a chair and a group of colleagues will catch you – this builds trust. What you really want is for the whole team to back up a few paces and let your manager fall flat on the deck. That would also teach a valuable lesson – how to laugh your arse off. Even worse, in the cringe sessions you might get invited to talk about your inner feelings or tell your colleagues why you think they are such a valuable member of the team.

If you really want to know the true meaning of friendship and loyalty – get a dog and take them for long walks on the three days you would have wasted ‘team building’.

Alastair and Daisy

Superheroes

 

This week, Discussions with My Dog pays tribute to the guys and girls who make it their business to save the world - Superheroes. They may not have a great deal of dress sense – most superheroes insist on wearing their underpants over their tights - but they make up for that with amazing powers and an unerring sense of duty.

Daisy’s opinion of some of your favourites

Superman – this guy has it all; the ability to fly, super-human strength, bullet proof pecs and x-ray vision. Who didn’t dream of having x-ray vision when they were 6 years old? The main problem with Superman is he’s too good - he makes all other superheroes a bit redundant.

Batman – remember the old Batman from the 60’s TV series, played by Adam West. He told corny jokes and could escape from the most impossible situations with an ingenious invention stored in his utility belt. Check this out
Then Hollywood ruined Batman by giving him a dark and moody makeover. Who wants a superhero who hangs out in an underground cavern, probably listening to grunge music and generally sucking the life out of everything.

Wonder Woman – Daisy thinks WW is very cool. Daisy would like to borrow her lasso of truth to find out where I’ve been hiding the dog treats.

Cat Woman – obviously not one of Daisy’s favourites.

Spiderman – not an ideal dog owner. Every time he stroked the dog, a sticky web would be left in their fur.

Incredible Hulk – what a rotten super-power. Say you are in the garden fixing a broken panel in the fence and you hit your thumb with the hammer. Next thing you know you’re waking up 3 hours later in nothing but a pair of knee length jeans (the £90 Levi’s that you only bought last week) and wishing you had gone for stretch fit and you’ve trashed the whole fence in your furious green rage.

Alastair and Daisy

Recycling

We all know that recycling is good for the environment. Discussions With My Dog supports recycling – in most cases.

Daisy believes in recycling the recycling. If the kitchen bin is unattended, she will diligently empty half its contents on the floor just to check that the waste packaging has been properly disposed of and all traces of food have been removed. Sometimes she has to chew the packaging into tiny pieces to get the job done properly.

Have you ever noticed that mail order parcels often arrive with unnecessary amounts of packaging – there are boxes within boxes, layers of bubble wrap and polystyrene linings. One mid-sized delivery can easily fill up your whole recycle bin. Don’t stand for this - fight back! Tell the supplier you want to return the goods within a 14 day cooling off period, return the box, with all the packaging, to the supplier with a note explaining you are happy with the product but want your money back for the delivery cost which has clearly been ramped up due to excessive packaging. If everyone did this, I bet packaging would quickly get stripped back to the bare minimum.

Recycling can be timeless (almost). In music terms there can be no better example than Status Quo. They’ve written hit songs, released dozens of albums and played thousands of shows over 6 decades. All this by recycling three chord songs. OK, you can tell a Quo track a mile off because they have a similar sound, but if you have a magic formula why waste it?

Recycling isn’t always recommended. Take four or five cardboard cut-outs, teach them a few stupid dance moves and how to lip sync and you have created a boy band.  They will pump out a few forgettable inane tunes that will be hugely popular with pre-teen girls for a couple of years. The same band gets recycled a couple of years later, nobody notices because you can’t remember what the previous version sounded like.

Finally, here’s an example of how a household utensil, in this case on old mop, can be recycled into a brand new pet - mop dog

Alastair and Daisy

How your dog can motivate you to do sport

Everyone knows the importance of exercise. Daisy loves a run in the woods or on the beach. Unlike dogs most people prefer to take their exercise in a gym. So, this week, we get Daisy’s take on what the gym has to offer:

The squash court – She watched some guys whacking a rubber ball against the wall for a couple of minutes. Unfortunately, Daisy doesn’t play the same rules. She ran across the court, snapped up the ball and it hasn’t been seen since.

The weights room – not much to see here, mostly jar heads and posers.

The running machine – a bunch of people pretending to be hamsters on a treadmill.

Spin class – some ladies inside hamster balls.

The exercise bikes – another bunch of people going nowhere, only they’re going nowhere faster than the ones on the hamster treadmill.

The swimming pool – after a run through the woods Daisy loves to cool off in the water. Her favourite pool looks a bit different. 

The shower room – I reminded Daisy this is what happens to dogs after they go swimming the dirty pond. Daisy thought it was about time to leave.

We finished our introductory tour of the gym. The rep asked us if I would like to become a member. They were doing a special deal for £50 a month. Unfortunately, dogs are not welcome. Daisy and I are off to the woods.

Alastair and Daisy