A short sharp kick-off to the head

What with the moving and having no net access from home and all, the report from last week's kick-off at work has been somewhat delayed. Still, the whole thing was such an impressive failure that I feel the need to write about it before the memory fades, as I hope it will.

We've been having severe lack of morale at work, so the MD for IT Operation decided to do something fun for the whole department (about 40 persons). 36 of us went along, which is a fairly good attendance rate. The setting was a hostel/conference thingy called Snöå Bruk, outside Dala-Järna in Dalarna, about 300 kms to the northwest of Stockholm. They'd chartered a bus for the event, but I chose to drive in my own car instead of spending four hours being sick in a bus among rowdy colleagues. My boss went in my car as she had a cold and a slight fever; also, both of us live northwest of Stockholm so it felt very stupid to drive in to the office and then be driven back along the same route. This point will become relevant later.

We arrived at Snöå Bruk around 12.30, and were served a delicious luncheon. So far, all was good. Then we had about an hour of talk about company goals and department goals, whereafter we were split into six groups, each of which should come up with a slogan for the department. After that, each group was given a digital video camera to make an ad film for their slogan. That part was very fun! When all movies were finished, we voted on "best slogan" and "best movie", and the winners got free movie tickets to one of the two major movie chains in Sweden. With that, the work-related program for the day ended, shortly after 18.00.

We had 45 minutes of free time until the bus was to take us to wherever we were going for dinner. I spent it resting and doing relaxation techniques, as I was already rather tired from the early morning and the long drive. About ten minutes before the bus was supposed to leave, most of us were gathered outside around the bus. I went to sit inside the warm bus instead of outside in the cold (it was around 0 Celsius, i.e. freezing), and chatted with the bus driver. Time passed. It was 19.00. Then it was 19.10, and we were still waiting. The event organizer came and told us that we were waiting for a guide, who promised to be there in ten minutes. I fetched a book, in case the delay would be longer.

At 19.30, they opened the dining hall and let everybode come in for a drink. I sat reading until the book ran out of new words. Then I fetched a new one and went to sit in the bus. Time passed.

At 20.30, the guide showed up, and the bus could finally leave. The guide made a perfunctory excuse and proceeded to tell everybody about the district. It was one of the earliest iron ore districts in Sweden and there were indications of iron ore extraction for about 1500 years or so. We would probably have been more interested if we hadn't been so hungry.

The bus brought us to a stop way out in the forests. Those who didn't have sufficiently warm clothing were lent thick boots and socks and felt jackets. We walked down to a lake, on the ice of which a fire had been lit. There were two horses and a sleigh, and there was mulled wine at the fire. Unfortunately there was nothing non-alcoholic, so those of us who for some reason abstain from alcohol got nothing to drink. There was no food. After a while, we were offered a ride in the sleigh. We thought that this would be the ride to the actual dinner place, but it turned out to be a short tour on the lake. Which was fun, but not very filling.

At about 22.00, the guide person told us to get 16 people to go on a sled to the eating place. Boss's boss, Per, told me and a guy with a broken ankle boon, and a woman from Cuba who really doesn't like winter at all, to go with the first sled party so we'd get to sit down indoors. We walked up to the sled. It was a very rickety contraption, two seats facing eachother so close that we had to sit with our knees between knees of the persons on the other bench in order to have any room at all. The sled was pulled by a snowscooter driven by the guide. The guide was about as good at judging how many people could fit on a sled as he was at keeping time - with 10 people on it, the sled was very crowded indeed. It was also heavy. So heavy that the scooter couldn't pull it up the hills, and all able-bodied people had to get out and push it up every hill. The whole ride took a little more than 30 minutes and ended up at a small clearing, around which a few longhouses had been built in the way they would have been 1500 years ago - high, pointed roofs, a small entrance without a door, a fire in the middle of the house and a smoke window above it. There were plates and cutlery stacked outside, and a fire was going. The snowscooter went off to fetch the next group, while the rest of us stood around waiting for food to happen.

To our immense surprise, the food wasn't ready yet. We were told that when the cook and his helpers had arrived to the place, it was about a foot deep in snow. So before they could set anything up, they had to shovel enough to get the place reasonably clear. They were not at all happy with guide-person, who was supposed to have taken care of that... Still, after about 15 minutes, we got the appetizer, which was salmon with some sort of red-beet coleslaw or something. Very tasty indeed! So when we heard the snowscooter coming back, we were ready to greet our coworkers with reasonably good cheer.

Except there were no coworkers on the sled. The sled was in fact empty. Apparently the coworkers who'd been waiting around for two hours on a frozen lake had mutinied, and demanded to be driven back to the hostel and given food there. The guide had returned to fetch the cook, so he'd be able to fix some food for the coworkers. By this time, the main course was finally ready. It was deer ragout with baked potatoes. This, too, tasted great. While we were eating, our boss got a phone call on her mobile, informing her that we'd have to return to the bus pretty much immediately, since the bus driver was maxing out on number of hours working without sleep, and if he didn't get to stop driving soon, he wouldn't be able to drive the bus back to Stockholm the next morning. So this time, when the scooter came back, the guide was ordered to take us back immediately. He didn't much care for this, having decided to stay and eat with us for a while first. We, on the other hand, cared even less about what he wanted.

In order not to have to push the sled up every small incline, we decided to split the party in two. The first five of us, including me, got to the bus sometime after midnight. Fortunately my book was still in the seat where I'd left it, so the waiting for the other five wasn't as boring as it might have been. They got to the bus shortly before one am, and we arrived at the hostel after ten minutes or so. At that point, our coworkers had just gotten their food...

I had no problems falling asleep that night, and when I decided to drive home immediately after breakfast, instead of going scooter riding with the others, it took about five minutes until I had the car full of coworkers wanting a ride.

The funniest part is, this is still not the worst kickoff I've been to...