Activities for Old People
 

Lucky me, I'm the training coordinator for an office of around 50 people. One of my tasks is to plan the agenda for a staff picnic at a local park, and I have to come up with some "team-building" activities for the afternoon. Here are my obstacles:

• In the past, we've done sports (volleyball, baseball, etc.), but this year our new manager has banned any physical activity, for fear of someone getting injured.

• The office is made up mostly of middle-aged auditors, who lack a sense of humor.

• Everyone is cheap, so I can't really spend any money on the activity.

Trivia is the only thing I can come up with, as I've heard other offices have done a variation of Jeopardy, but that would mean I'd have to write questions. I'm open for any ideas, no matter how wacky.

Shuffleboard? I hear that appeals to old people. Horseshoes as well. Charades possibly? Drunken charades even. They're middle-aged auditors with no sense of humor, they should be dying for some drinks.

Texas Hold 'Em! Maybe you could hold some sort of card game competition. There seems to be a high interest in Poker and Texas Hold 'Em games. A scavenger hunt? Give them maps and have them try to figure out the clues in order to find the treasure and give them the winning team gift cards. It doesn't have to involve anything too strenuous and it could go with the recent "Pirates Of The Caribbean" obsession.

I should mention that I work for the federal government, so alcohol is out. The poker idea is interesting, though I'll have to research whether gambling, even if we're not playing for money, is allowed.

no value gambling, just for chips (which are all turned in at the end of the night for no value, or for raffle tickets), has been gaining popularity at buisness parties around here.

Some other popular things i've seen round here have been dancefloors with a band, as well as fresh, hand made cigares. I assume both of these are expensive though... and being a bit older crowd, a dancefloor with a dj instead of a band probably wouldn't work.

no drinks? That really hinders things... The governmental events here always have alcohal... different regions diff politics i guess.

Well, why an outdoor setting if you're not allowed any physical activities. I dunno, I'd say something like horseshoes or a similar low strain activity is always interesting, hell even I have fun with that stuff and I'm not that old.

As for the trivia solution, there's plenty of stuff you can download off the net or whatever that allows for easy setup of that kind of stuff.

I definitely don't envy you, because short of some intelligence tournament of some kind, you really don't have a lot of options. Good luck though!

I really would love to say "Texas Hold'em" or "Garden Party", but the key word I see here is "Team Building". I really have a hard time coming up with generic team building activities without a physical aspect. I can come up with a simple team card game tournament like a game of spades, or if you are willing to push a little risk for the sake of a more strategic heavy card game, you can go for pinochle, bridge, or canasta.

I'm really pushing hard for ideas, but this really is a tough one. I just can't understand going to a park, and not doing anything physical. It's just asinine. I would try to ask him to come half way with you and play ultimate frisbee. It is athletic, but it is a non-contact sport, and you don't have to be too in shape for it.

It's nice to see someone else realizes the popularity of "Texas Hold'em" :). Ultimate Frisbee isn't a contact sport where you live? At my college, ultimate frisbee is so contact that more people are injured by it than by football, baseball, and basketball combined. Some of their injuries cause me to cringe, and I'm in full-contact martial arts.

Yeah, I've been trying to think of more things for the picnic. Seriously, what kind of picnic doesn't include physical activity games? Your government has a big impact on what my government does, so basically it's like both of our local governments are not logical. Although, I think it would be very awesome to see middle-age men in stiff suits in a DDR tournament on teams.

Everyone loves karaoke. You can rent the machines, I think, but I bought one for around $100. You can download the songs off LimeWire.

TECHNICALLY it is a non contact sport, but yeah, I've definitely seen some college teams play rougher than the rugby teams. I suggest it because I can't imagine some pointy suits jumping in to someone's chest to intercept the frisbee. I also suggest it because my college buddies would sometimes play ultimate frisbee because they would be too stoned to play Texas Hold'em, and that says something.

Although, seeing suits doing that would be something interesting to watch. Too stoned to play Texas Hold'em? Wow, you've gotta be even more stoned than Britney Spears was in a video on the Suicide Girls website.

We're having a picnic, because it's an office tradition. Like I said, the new manager is an idiot, so he's having a picnic, but he's banning any kind of physical activity, and he scheduled the picnic after school starts so that no one can bring their kids.

Karaoke would be fun, except there's no electricity for the machine. The Texas Hold 'em is out because the rules on gambling are sort of gray, and my boss is paranoid about staying within the rules.

I had a conversation with him about activities this week. His idea of a fun team-building activity was to put people on teams and give them a work-related problem to solve. Woo, fun! As it looks right now, I'm going to find someone with Trivial Pursuit cards, and do some sort of trivia game. It looks like that's the only thing that will fit into his very narrow definition.

How about bingo? That might be something to look at, or maybe croquet? I think that one is a lot more fun then golf. But I'm weird, maybe other people might enjoy golf more. Those are some ideas, and they're not ...oh dang. I just saw the "No physical activity"...well, you could mention croquet...right?

Well, then. There's still the bingo. The only problem would be prizes.

Team building activities? I've had too many of them, unfortunately. They get boring too. Some I can think of that I've done recently (upon joining a club or something):

Doing a personality exercise, then getting people who fall into that particular personality category to create a T-shirt design representing people of their personality. For example, I fell under something along the lines of extravert, so we came up with a shirt that says something about our competitiveness. Make sure everyone knows each other's name.

Have everyone wear a famous person's name on their back, and when meeting people, your goal is to figure out what name you have on your back through people answering your "yes or no" questions. Everyone else knows the name on your back though. Example, you have George Bush or something. You ask, is he male? Is he old? etc. When you figure it out, someone else has to go up and the cycle repeats.

Too bad you can't do anything physical, because usually those are more "fun" (like involve hulahoops going through a chain of people holding hands).

We played that famous person on your back game at our company retreat last year and it went over well. Also, if you have access to a scanner you can have everyone bring in a baby picture that only you would see, then you print them out and everyone has to write a person's name by each picture, to try to identify which baby is which employee.

Send out a mass e-mail and then set up an idea jar in the office and see if someone else comes up with the answer.

If it's team-building think of something where you can break into small groups and compete in some way. Like the "tallest Popsicle stick" contest, but something way way less lame.

What about some large-scale variant of Pictionary, or something?

...I got nothing. Try the jar.