Happy National Have Fun At Work Day!

Dana Burton

Did you plan a party for today? Plan to ride office chairs down a nearby ramp? (this may or may not have been enjoyed several years ago and the inspiration for a 100 word drabble challenge I wrote.)

Had I been thinking, I would have made something to bring in and share (probably popcorn as a few are gluten-free.) Maybe I shouldv'e brought in some alligator sausage my husband bought for me to try! LOL

What do you do to have fun at work? How have you celebrated?

We celebrate each person's birthday in this office with a carry-in to “surprise” them. (I say surprise as it's only a surprise the first year they are here. We also buy something special, a keepsake, for when a loved one passes.

Finance is known as party central in this regard! ??

Austen Brown

@Dana Burton - At my last job, when we were working out of the same office I led the FUN Committee. We ran office related fun activities/team building - celebrating birthdays, secret Santa, bake-offs, cook-offs, potlock lunches, Christmas/holiday party, etc. throughout the year. While some where on-going like the birthday one, we tried to do at least something once a month.

Faith Murray

@Dana Burton
Aw shucks, this wasn't even on my radar!

While we don't often do parties per se, our Development team almost always has donuts or snacks on our office island. (We get lots of staff from across campus stopping by for some reason. ? ) We do a carry-in or potluck on each person's birthday, and we have team builders at our staff meetings each week. There has been the occasional flying rubber chicken in our office, and unsaid persons have occasionally giftwrapped people's offices, created office chair dummies, or other such fun.

Dana Burton

@Faith Murray, this sounds so much like my office. There have been pranks (a dollar's worth of pennies, which resulted in a life-sized grim reaper sitting in her chair!) We also seem to get a lot of visitors when their are snacks. ?

Dana Burton

@Austen Brown, this sounds like such fun!

Barbara Kunkel

@Dana Burton Since we are remote, our department meets quarterly for our meeting and then out to lunch. We are attending a fundraising summit in Florida and will spend the day at Epcot Center for team building.

Carlene Johnson

@Dana Burton
Our office is really good at having fun. After all, we are Advancement and therefore have the event planners on our team! We regularly celebrate birthdays and other milestones, as well as holiday gift swaps and fiscal year end celebrations. During the pandemic, our boss sent us Door-Dash gift certificates and we all ordered lunch in and ate together over zoom.

In the larger organization, we just had Soup-er Tuesday which was a fun soup/chili/stew contest with voting and winners. There have also been cookie contests and I forsee a pickle-ball tournament in the future!

Elizabeth Perron

@Dana Burton

We have fun by talking about non-work related things in the first five minutes of every Community Manager team meeting.