Skip to content
As many of you may have heard, That! Company hosted a haunted house within our office to raise money for local charities. We did raise a few hundred dollars to help out local groups, but that is not the focus of this blog. The office underwent an incredible transformation, as some of these pictures show, but that is not my focus either. My focus is on what happened after 5 PM, the evening before the haunted house.p
Our haunted house scene was a medical experiment gone wrong which created the Zombie virus. At 4 PM on the evening before the big event, I assigned one of my employees to fill test tubes and petry dishes with water and food coloring. This is an employee who regularly takes on extra projects for clients and never has any time to spare. He begrudgingly went to the break room where we had pitchers of colored water and scores of test tubes. When I went to check on the progress a little before 5, I was amazed to discover that this employee had raided the fridge, putting condiments, relish, etc. in the test tubes to “make diseases,” or at the very least, make disgusting looking test tubes. The rest o the staff was truly stunned by his creepy creations. At 5 I told him he could wrap up. At 6 PM I told him he could go home. He responded, “But I am having fun.” He was not alone. Whether it was the staff who stayed late decorating, raided their attics, or gave all they could to the acting experience, it seemed the whole company had caught the “haunted house virus.” Perhaps my favorite moment of the whole event was when one employee who had worked so hard on planning and costumes was literally jumping up and down because he had scared someone so much. Laughter was wide-spread between “scenes.”
So what? Well, this was a definite team building activity for That! Company. People began to interact in ways outside their usual channels. They developed new outlets for their creative side. Many of the staff never realized their co-workers were art majors, or did community theater, or were that creative, or could twirl balls of fire on a rope! When was the last time your employees got to see one another in a different light? When was the last time they had the chance to give back to their community? With the holiday season looming, I would issue a challenge to the That! Company friends out there in the cyberverse. Give your employees a chance to interact in new and creative ways. Put them in a position to make a difference on each other’s lives or the community. Develop an enthusiastic little beaker of the “team virus” and watch it spread.
Written by: Derrick DeYarman – Director of SEO
