While adulting certainly has its perks, the worst part about graduating college was realizing that it meant no more summer breaks. Luckily for me, I got a job at a company that believes wholeheartedly in the philosophy that just because work isn’t out for summer, doesn’t mean we can’t have a little fun…
This past week I experienced my very first Fish Summer Fun, which is an annual tradition where the entire office (including all of our remote workers) gets together for some good ol’ team bonding. In true Fish fashion, the festivities included plenty of eating (particularly cheese, our No. 1 food group), lots of laughing, a few too many Snapchat filter selfies, and several rounds of Heads Up. Here’s a recap of all the shenanigans we got into during this year’s epic Fish Summer Fun.
The party kicked off with our customary happy hour at the office featuring our favorite menu items: wine, cheese & crackers, brownie brittle and did I mention wine? Fun fact: Fishies love us some wine. We discussed book club and I even heard rumors of a TV series watch club (TBA but fingers crossed). We even had tutorials on how to curl hair with a straightening iron – perks of working in an office with mainly women – and jammed out to our favorite Fish playlist, with everything from Adele (#QUEEN) to old school classics.
The next day, the Fish bowl migrated to our next activity, the escape room. An escape room is a physical adventure game in which you are locked in a room and have to work as a team to solve a series of puzzles and escape within an hour. Though this was a team bonding activity, there was definitely a healthy amount of competition. This is quite a good exercise for any companies that are interested in doing team-building things. There are loads of places that you can go to experience an escape as well. For example, depending on where you live, you could easily go to an Escape room near Fort Worth, however, there are plenty of others out there that you can pick from. Either way, we certainly enjoyed the one that we went to.
We were separated into three randomly selected teams and put into a series of rooms, all with different scenarios. The room themes consisted of: the hangover, a night out with a bad girl and a murder mystery. My team, of course, dominated and was the first group to break out of the room. I can’t say it wasn’t entertaining watching the other teams attempt to escape by unlocking the door from the other side, and I might have laughed out loud when our CEO (whose team lost) made the escape room employees walk him through the strategy behind the clues. Good stuff – as he would say 🙂
We then ventured to downtown Fort Lauderdale, where we enjoyed drinks, lunch and best of all, each other’s company.
The fish ladies, along with Bernie and Lorne, decided to pull out an old favorite… Heads Up! What is Heads Up you might ask? If you watch the Ellen DeGeneres show you’re probably familiar, but in case you don’t, the rules are pretty simple: one person places their phone on their forehead while the other players guess the word that’s displayed on the phone screen before the timer runs out. From naming celebrities, to singing, to silly accents, it was a good time – to say the least.
Overall, my first summer fun was a success! Like every company event, I have come to realize, out of all the fish in the sea… I am so glad they chose me.
