The Egg

The email had promised a day of “connection, trust, and renewed team spirit.” Marcus had read it twice on the coach and felt his spirit renew not at all.

By eleven they were in a field behind a country hotel outside Reading, holding a tarpaulin. The facilitator, a man in a branded fleece who said “let's unpack that” about the lunch options, explained the challenge. Each team had to move a raw egg across the field using only the tarp, a length of rope, and, he said, “the resources you already have within you.”

Gail, who managed the accounts and had not asked to be here, looked at the egg with open loathing.

“Right,” said Marcus. “So if we all hold a corner—”

“We tried that,” Gail said flatly, though they had not yet tried anything.

They tried it. The egg rolled to the low edge and dropped into the grass with the soft, final sound of a team-building exercise going wrong. The other team cheered. Someone took a photo. Marcus, on his knees in the wet field holding half an eggshell, understood that this photo would live on the company intranet forever.

By four o'clock the facilitator gathered everyone into a circle to reflect on the journey. He asked each person to name one thing they'd learned. Gail said she'd learned that Marcus couldn't be trusted with an egg. Everyone laughed, and for a moment it was almost genuine.

Then the facilitator beamed and told them that morale had never been higher.

On the silent coach back to the office, Marcus considered this. Morale, he was fairly sure, had rarely been lower. But that was hardly the kind of thing that went on the intranet.