This year, I was in charge of the office Christmas party. At our office, we don’t do the usual embarrassing things most offices do to celebrate the end of the working year; there are no evenings out in the town centre- or even worse, bringing the party to the office. Here, we celebrate Christmas by taking part in an activity we wouldn’t normally do everyday. Lots of people go out at the weekend, so how is that a unique celebration at the most wonderful time of the year?
This year, I decided it would be a great idea for us to go paintballing as our office party treat. The team always have a competition to see who can get the most sales every single day, so I know everybody in the office has a competitive streak. Arm everybody with a paintball gun and all bets are off; being the best soldier on the battlefield is a far better honour than being the employee of the month!
When I suggested the idea to the team, they all jumped at the idea- and straight away, they all started boasting about how they had the best shot and how they would defeat the other paintballers. As an extra special Christmas gift to the whole team, we arranged to finish work for the year the day before “Mad Friday”, so we could head to the battlefield on the day everybody else was having their last working day before Christmas time came around.
The one problem with the British weather is that it never snows on Christmas, meaning we couldn’t be battling it out in a winter wonderland. But that meant that we could forget about the Christmas spirit and get right on with the fighting! Altogether, there were nineteen of us on the battlefield and we had the war zone all to ourself. The staff were incredibly friendly and as soon as they found out we were having an office Christmas party, tailor made each of the games to suit our needs.
Firstly, we played all the classic games (like Capture the Flag and the Village shoot out) and we were having the time of our lives. Then, things got even better when the staff asked who our office boss was. Before I knew it, I was being chased down by all my fellow employees in a game called “Hunt the Boss”! It turns out my gun slinging skills are far better than I thought they were; I managed to wipe most of the team out and prove who really was the boss!
Not only was this a great Christmas party, it was a fantastic team building exercise and I would recommend it highly to everybody. We’ll definitely be having another paintball trip with Go Ballistic again and we won’t be waiting until next December either. After all, paintball is for life- not just for Christmas.
