Rituals; Ch. 5; page 128-129
Every year my company puts together the best of its employees that play hockey for the annual Tahoe Cup and Bash Hockey Tournament. I didn't play on the team this year, but the team did make it to the championship game (but lost). The company owner pays for the tournament fee so that all the players can play; all the players have to pay is for their hotel stay. This ritual of playing in a hockey tournament is a big deal to the many hockey players working at my company. Since my company is a ice skating rink many of the employees play hockey at various levels. Everyone appreciates the fact that the owner of the company pays the tourney fee. It is a great perk for working there. I think he also pays (or reimburses) employees who want to raise their coaching training for hockey. This is a benefit to the individuals who take advantage of this opportunity and it is a benefit to the rink so that the coaches achieve the highest coaching training available.
I can honestly say that I haven't heard of any similar rituals by any of my friend's organizations.
last day to blog
15 years ago
Both of my jobs have rituals that they take part in once a year. For instance my restaurant job has a margarita contest once a year that everyone gets very involved with and competitive in. Everyone is split up into teams and the team who sells the most margaritas gets a team outing to usually a sporting event or something along the lines. There is also a company softball tournament that takes place once a year. Also around the fall time, the restaurant does an annual fundraiser for a hospital and always is very successful in raising a decent amount of money for them.
ReplyDeleteMy other job being a little different than that of a restaurant does different kinds of annual activities. Every year they do an annual Christmas party for all the employees plus one guest which is always at a very nice venue and they serve a three or four course meal and provide a DJ. It is really fun and nice to hang out with everyone from work, outside of work. Another thing they do every summer is a company BBQ. This lets the employees bring family and friends instead of just one guest and lets the employees socialize and meet family members, significant others as well as children. I think both events are a good way to give back to the employees by providing time to get to know each other outside of work while having fun.
I think that it's great when a company actually does something or comes up with an activity that most everyone would want to do. It shows that the owner is really taking into account a cultural element that is up to date and not archaic. This strikes a chord with me because my old company used to organize something like "The Oscars" where all 250 employees had to gather in a hall, on their day off mind you, and sit for 3 hours while only the managers and ass kissers got all the awards. Excuse my french, but we also had to wear only denim with our shirts tucked in and a brown belt. Everyone looked like "Erkle" or "Denim Dan," and it was soooo not fun. In my case, it just shows that the owner was so out of date and that not all rituals or "dramatizations" within a company are beneficial and can create some resentment. Everyone I worked with hated this even, yet it was mandatory, "mandatory fun."
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