It should work like this. It doesn’t.

I am finally home after a solid five days in the corporate office attending a team meeting. Five days later, here are the things I know for sure:

1. Five days is two or three days too long
2. If allowed, I will drink too much and too often
3. I weirdly have no ability to stand up to Canadians
4. People who say “consensus” have absolutely no idea what the word “consensus” means
5. I can be talked into a lot of stupid things via peer pressure

It’s all fun and games until you get to Friday and realize your “action item” list is longer than a page, and none of this includes the job I already do. Yikes.

Every night I wanted to work out, eat dinner by myself, get a glass of wine, and watch Parks and Recreation on Netflix in my room. Instead, every night, I got dragged out for drinks, appetizers (in insane quantities) and dinner, and usually more drinks, which somehow lasted most of the night. Specifically when I say “dragged out,” I mean someone said “no, come with us” and I said “okay.” So you can see… a lot of heavy-handed tactics.

One day we cut out early to go shopping, because when your new boss invites you to go to the outlet stores at three o’clock on a Wednesday, you say yes. Duh. Anyway, I did not anticipate that she is not only a professional HR leader, but she is also a professional shopper (or should be) and she shamed us into buying a lot more than we should have. Again, by “shamed” I mean she said something like “you should buy that” and I said “okay.” Brutal.

Thursday afternoon was our “teambuilding” day – a word that usually contains falsehoods in both the ‘team’ and ‘build’ part – and we were supposed to go whale watching. I was dreading this like grim death but luckily there was some kind of storm off the coast, so I did not have to go throw up off the side of a boat in clear view of my coworkers. Nice.

Someone insane then decided instead that we were going to go Go-Kart Racing. Because, when you think about it, the best thing to do with people who have been stuck in a room together for four days fighting about anything possible, is to put them in cars that go up to 50 mph and let them go at it. Everyone survived, pretty much, and there were only a few “accidental” crashes. It was more fun than it probably sounds, but I am weirdly sore even now. I guess it takes different muscles to grip a wheel and bear down on someone until you force them into a wall than, say, yoga. Go figure.