It will hurt you...unless it doesn't. The things we worry about rarely end up being the things that smack you in the back of the head in the middle of the night.
The enforced fun stuff at the hellscape company that laid me off were a non-issue. The layoff got me in a position to go work for a much less poisonous place.
Heh, you just made me realize my favorite kind of mandatory fun is the sort that forces a bunch of my co-workers to play some team sport (any team sport, really) with me that I don't get to play often as an adult, because it's usually difficult to get enough people together for it. I dislike most of the rest, but that kind's awesome. For me, anyway—probably some of the others hate it.
Haha ye. I hate "mandatory fun" unless it is soccer or longball or whatever I never have chance to do otherwise. Strangely, those events are usually actually not "mandatory" but just enthusiasts wanting to play team sports.
The good part of that is probably that it's still work (a fun kind of work.) You're not trying to come up with things to talk about or to be witty. The subject is the game. I wonder if boardgaming could work the same way.
The remote aspect makes a lot of these engagements more pathetic, not that I really enjoyed them in person.
We had Zoom 'happy hours' where people drank alcohol and rambled about inane stuff. It was certainly an hour, but happy? No, more like depressing hours.
I didn't mind mandatory fun that's just stuff you might do anyway like going down the pub with your colleagues and maybe your boss to get some pints it, but I'm really not a fan of structured mandatory fun that involves a sense of obligation.
If you were working with somebody you respect would you ask them to lunch or dinner? Sure, perfectly normal in every society on earth. However would you invite them to a sack race?
The enforced fun stuff at the hellscape company that laid me off were a non-issue. The layoff got me in a position to go work for a much less poisonous place.