Office Outing - Planning surprises

This outing planning had its own complications. Some of which is described in the prelude (here).

The rest were all surprises that followed.

Getting the guys together

One big question of an office outing is should it be short (no night stay) or should it be long. The married guys (a minority in our group) wanted a short one as they either had issues bringing family and/or dint want to be away without family. There were few who were lazy to go on an outing (short or long). There were few more (including me) who dint want to back off at the last moment so voted out of the outing. After the first round of mails for acceptance, we ended up having 6 out of 18 who were really interested in going. And one third of the team going on a team outing was not acceptable. A meeting was called up so that everybody justifies the reason of not going and if the majority convinces the other we shall go with the majority (outing or no outing).

Now is that confusing!!!

Anyways to cut the long story short, after half an hr of discussion, lot of non-goers and lazy people were convinced to come (as they dint have right justification), couple of married guys who wouldnt make it to an outing (short or long) were left out and the rest of the non-bachelors agreed to bring their wives.

Too many longs and shorts so far.. :P

Destination: Rishikesh - Camping and River rafting and associated activities that is organized alongwith.

Coordinator: Manjul + Naveen + I guess a few more

Rounds of phone calls to different vendors, getting quotations and analyzing the options, one vendor was finalized. Booking done over the phone. Planned dates - 18th and 19th September.

14th September

Rumours spread that rafting in Rishikesh is banned for few days. Some said it was due to the sudden downpour. Some brought the news that there was some strike going on by the rafting organizers.

Are we going to be worried by rumours? No way. Outing was ours and we shall go.

15th September

Coordinators after many phone calls got the real news out of the vendor. Chances of rafting are slim!!! Now was the real action that need to be commended. The coordinators did all that they do to finish off bugs before the release date. Am I exagerating??

Well it was almost the same. Google searches, alternate destinations, more google searches for new vendors, phone calls, more googling. In a matter of few hrs our destination has changed.

Destination: Mussourie. A few rounds of discussion at the cafeteria about the new destination. "What do we do in mussourie?" "It is a boring place", "I have been there".

Well the fact was Mussourie was the nearest known location.

Real Destination: Chamba/Dhanaulti - somewhere in between the two.

16th September

All bookings done. We shall reach leave on Thursday (17th) night.

Transport: Tempo Traveller (Surprise. 4 team members would come on bikes)

Reach our camp on 18th morning.

Spend the day doing activities (no one was sure of what)

Stay in tents at night

Return journey on 19th morning (starting after breakfast)

Wonderful. And there we go!!!

This is getting to be longer than I had expected. Rest in the next post here.

Office Outing - Prelude

All work and no "outing" makes Jack a dull boy.

This was well known amongst all at office but still there were very few outings in our group. I had attributed that to the cost-cutting measures that our company was taking due to the so-called recession.

After a few months of hard work amidst the rumours of layoffs, there was some discussion on the urgent need for an outing to change our moods. Now the question was "who will bell the cat" for the funds. Asking our manager was an option but we decided to take a bigger leap.

Come May and our VP was in town and dropped down to our office for his customary visit. There was lot of talk about the good fortunes that are coming our way and possible expansions in some of the groups. There wasn't a better time to bell the Super Cat :-)

At the lunch table, we just put up the cause and Voila!! "Few thousand bucks" should not be an issue was the reply. We began speculation of how few those thousands would be and in the end we got a reasonable amount for us to plan for an outing which is not restrained to a movie+dinner.

Though we had intentions of an outing at the earliest, we had to refrain ourselves because of layoffs that followed. After that we were unsure of what will happen to those few thousand bucks promise.

Anyways, after a couple of months we were again in the mood for the outing after we got more clarity that funds are available. We had almost everything planned for a single day trip to Manesar (some 50kms from Delhi). It was a resort and had some games and team building activities. But this time we got a new obstacle. The outing was planned for our team which evoked harsh emotions from the rest of the guys at office. Emotions sparked off to higher levels in management and immediate approval of funds was not possible.

A round table discussion with the team sorted the matter quickly. All that we need to do was plan it in advance so that there is time for getting the advance (You know how slow everybody is when it comes to money!!!) Another nice decision came up in the round table conference. We can go for outings once in every quarter if we have funds left in our kitty.

With all those hopes we plan with full enthusiasm (from few, MKD being the leader).

What happened after that? Click here.