RE: What's cooking and why

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josie2214 in Galenkp's Stuff • 4 months ago

Back in the day we voluntarily started to bring snacks to work on Fridays for our team. It was a nice little touch to the end of the week and some extra dopamine boost, as it was exciting to find out what kind of snacks someone had brought, or the joy of surprising colleagues with something interesting and fresh.

Since it was a completely voluntary thing a few issues popped up. Like, only some team members would bring the snacks, and others would only partake in the eating aspect of the whole thing. Or some Fridays 3 people would bring something at the same time, while other Fridays no one would.

This is where the Team Lead decided to step in to regulate the whole thing and made it mandatory, with a schedule and everything, and, honestly it just soured the whole thing entirely..

Hugs&Coffee,
~Josie~

4 months ago in Galenkp's Stuff by josie2214

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galenkp 4 months ago

I suppose people have different experiences with things like this. I'm not sure why management stepping in would ruin something that, to me, sounded like it was a bit sporadic at best. Anyway, thanks for commenting, I appreciate it.

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josie2214 4 months ago

Haha, only someone in the management position would fail to see how making something like that mandatory for everyone would ruin the fun of it. xD

You see, we who started it and were the most active in 'providing' were doing it out of pure joy of it, we weren't at all concerned about keeping the tab of who ate how much vs how much they contributed. It was only the Team Leader who thought it was not FAIR!

The difference between voluntary and mandatory is the difference between -
"Oh, it's Friday, I feel like surprising my team mates on a whim with something fun, let me go and grab something from store. ^^ "

and

"Oh, f**k, I forgot it was my turn to do the Snack Duty this Friday, I have to quickly run to the store or the whole team will be angry with ME, specifically. douh"

And that is for those of us, who originally WANTED to do this. Imagine the ones who had little to no interest in the whole thing in the first place, I'd imagine it would go something like - "F**k, again this f*****g bull****t!"

I'm sure some would even question the legality of mandating spending one's own money on the team like that, since it wasn't from the team budget but out of individual pockets.

One thing that's important to remember - you cannot mandate FUN. That's just not how it works and always backfires sooner or later.

Hugs&Coffee,
~Josie~

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