With the official start of summer now underway, Fish hosted its annual Summer Fun event June 21 and 22. Each year, employees from near and far (including myself) travel to Fort Lauderdale for two days of team bonding, which includes a variety of food, drinks, games and activities. Being one of Fish’s newest employees, this was my first time attending a Fish event, let alone Summer Fun. Word on the street is that Summer Fun is one of the most highly anticipated agency events of the year, so I was excited to see what it was all about!
As a remote Fishie hailing from New Jersey, I flew in from Newark Airport Tuesday afternoon, arriving in beautiful Fort Lauderdale later that evening. A few of us remote Fishies met for the first time at dinner at The Terrace Grill and caught up over a couple of drinks.
On Wednesday, we spent some time working in the morning before festivities kicked off around 12:30pm… and naturally when us workaholics were not offline at 12:31 p.m., Marisa came to round us up (and rightfully so!) We spent the afternoon dining on gourmet pizzas and sipping lots of wine. The pizza was amazing – as an anti-marinara girlie, Marisa made sure there were plenty of white pizza options, which I greatly appreciated. She even bought cute wine charms with our initials on them! After some wining and dining, we played a few games including “How Well Do You Know Lorne?” (which, as a newbie, I failed miserably at), and Fish’s own version of Scategories with Marisa and Simo as our lovely MCs. As the new kid, it was funny to hear my teammate’s responses and to learn a bit more about each of their personalities.
On Thursday, we went to a candle making class at Candleland. Team bonding aside, I was really excited for this because I came across this spot on TikTok and had been dying to go! After picking out our favorite scents and vessels, we all got to work. Two hours and a lemon cake-scented candle later, I can proudly say the Fish team and myself have become candle making connoisseurs. Plus, Bernie and I made the same candle scent because #twins. After Candleland, we ventured to S3 for a warranted lunch. And may I say, some of us even stayed out way past our bedtimes to keep the party going.
While leaving Fort Lauderdale always bums me out, it was nice catching up with the team at Summer Fun and getting to meet everyone in person. What’s there not to love? Great food, people and warm weather sounds like a solid week to me. Sending a well-deserved round of applause for Marisa for organizing and for Lorne for accommodating us remote Fishies. Can’t wait to come back for my quarterly visit and our annual Fishmas celebration this December!
