After being home with the kids for six years, I needed to return to the workforce. It was difficult to convince anyone (especially myself) that I really wanted to return to working full-time after being home for so long. Anyway, with a degree in finance and economics, surely I could do some type of entry-level accounting position, even after all those years. I eventually landed at a temporary agency for accountants, where I was told that after a few temp jobs it should be much easier to find a permanent position.
My first assignment was at a large corporation. I mostly did the stuff that no one else wanted to do. You know, the stuff that after it was done and I was gone, the permanent employees could say, “Oh yeah, that’s not my fault—we had a temp do it”. At any rate, I was hoping that if I did a good job, maybe they would hire me. I did everything I could to impress them.
The department had gotten a new Controller not long before I started with the company. He scheduled monthly luncheons for the group and monthly meetings. At each meeting he would use some type of “ice breaker”. I suppose this was meant to bring the employees together, to make them bond and become a solid team. Although his intentions were the best, I’m afraid he fell a little short of his mark.
In the first meeting, everyone was required to tell the group where they had grown up and where they went to high school. In the next meeting everyone was given paper to draw a pig. We were told that each detail of the pig represented one of our own characteristics. I wanted to know what characteristic it reveals if you make someone draw a pig in a business meeting. But I digress…
In another meeting each person was given cards that were stamped with values. We had to put the value cards in the order that we felt was most important to our lives, and then show our priorities to the group. Of course everyone lied in this one, because no one really wants to admit to his boss that just about everything in life is more important than this job.
The most unusual icebreaker was called Two Truths and One Lie. We were told of this “game” a few weeks before the meeting. Each person had to write on a sheet of paper two truths and one lie about themselves. The paper was to be put in a hat, without the person’s name on it. The papers would be read to the group during the meeting. The group would then try to figure out whose paper was being read and which statement was the lie.
The first paper said:
1. I go to Disney World twice a year with my husband.
2. I watched sea turtles for a year as a researcher.
3. I won a yodeling contest at Oktoberfest while on vacation in Germany.
As it was read, I looked around the room. Who could it be? And then I knew- it was the blonde lady with a slight smile on her face, already back on the beach, watching the sea turtles and trying to remember why she ever took a job as an accountant. Several months later, after a real trip to Germany, she resigned and went back to her first love, researching sea life.
The next slip read:
1. Have two kids in their 30s.
2. Invented the Flo-bee, an ingenious hair cutting device
3. Rode topless cross-country on a motorcycle.
The Flo-bee was the lie. Someone said, “Ewww!” The owner of the slip piped up, “What, it was the 60’s!” and we quickly moved on. This revelation did not have quite the desired effect, and this woman was never looked at in the office the same way again.
The next paper read:
1. Ran away with the circus at 18 to train the elephants.
2. Knitted an entire outfit by myself.
3. Took Opera singing lessons.
The Opera lessons were the lie. This was the Human Resources Manager. She was fired from the elephant job because she couldn’t get the senior elephants to play nice with the junior elephants. Hmmm. What kind of freaks were we working with anyway?
My red face gave me away immediately as they read mine:
1. I have been a teacher.
2. I have been a credit underwriter for country music stars.
3. I was a champion hog caller in high school.
They guessed that the teacher was the lie. They were wrong. They really didn’t know me at all. The job ended after six months because all that they really needed was a temp. I still can’t believe that I earned money to play that game. I moved on to the next job, but I still think about those little exercises sometimes. If I ever become a manager, I don’t think that I will ever use any…but, if I’m ever drunk with a bunch of strangers, I just might try them again.
Oh, yeah, and tell me again, what was the point of all those meetings?