My work has an “employee bonding event” coming up. It’s a full day trip to a neighboring tourist city and on the itinerary is a scenic bus tour and all-you-can-eat seafood buffet including all-you-can-eat local seafood delicacy. Everyone is encouraged to participate. But...it’s SELF-PAY.
Oh, and it’s on a weekend so we are using our (uncompensated) personal time. They’re not even telling us how much we might expect to pay for the privilege of doing this work-related activity on our personal time. Well, guess who just happens to not be available on that date?
Yeah, that's a bad joke. Do it during a workday or at LEAST have the company pay for that shit. Who the hell is going to attend that?
There are five people signed up so far. I’m guessing those are the people vying for good end of year reviews and promotions.
Could be.
Over the weekend I attended a gala and silent auction for a friend's PTA. (Yeah-- most of my social activities revolve around charitable ventures. It's a family thing.) Historically this PTA has funded most of the supplies for students' science projects, bought a bunch of equipment for classes ranging from the library to Phys Ed, provided computer support for all the students, and generated an annual $200 "mini-grant" for each classroom so that no teacher has to pay so much as a cent out of pocket for classroom supplies. This charter school, a type of public school, is ranked highly at a national level and produces outstanding students with a high scholarship and college acceptance rate. Students consistently outperform those at even the most selective private schools.
In most respects the event was very well run. The organizers kept their operating costs low but still put on a good party. They got a deal on the venue, the wine, and the finger food. There were dozens of silent auction items that were well presented, and the auctioneer who auctioned off the major items was an excellent professional who saw to it that the reserve price was met. Sadly, although it was standing room only in previous years, the ticket sales were lean this year. Only two teachers and faculty members showed up. Although the event made enough money to cover the expenses of putting it on, the event didn't generate the revenue it did in previous years. The attendance was the only reason why. If you have bodies in the room, you get bids. No bodies? No bids.
At a silent auction or charity auction, you need bids because the point is not for the people bidding to get a bargain. The goal is to get people into an ego competition so that the value of each item gets bid up well past its usual sale price, resulting in a sizable benefit to the organizing charity. Sometimes it turns into a game in which people who try to run the bid up as high as they can without actually buying the item-- a grown-up version of "hot potato" that is actually quite fun. Other times, people bid on items they need, want, and can use (such as vehicle care vouchers for an oil change or a tire rotation) and get them for approximately market value. They bid up to the market value, and then stop. If they win the auction, they have an item they already budgeted for and needed to buy anyway. If they don't win the auction, so what? They showed up, they enjoyed the wine and the finger food, and they got to chat with people they know or ought to know.
When you don't get attendance, you don't get bids. Most items went for well below their market value. All the reserve prices were met for the major items, but nothing got bid up.
Given the extent to which the teachers benefit from this program, I truly expected more to attend. But then I got to thinking that this kind of event must be an awful bore and an extension of a classroom job that the teachers don't necessarily like. Interacting with parents and members of the community might not be a way they want to spend an evening. Of course, most of the parents didn't attend either.
I wonder how they'll deal with not having the funding the next year.