This has to be the worst team-building exercise ever.
We’re talking about the “group cleanse,” and make no mistake, it doesn’t center around communal bathing (although that doesn’t sound like a great idea, either).
No, this exercise involves a group of employees drinking some vile-tasting concoction of ground-up plant life, and then, apparently, waiting around until it’s time to dash to the bathroom.
We’re talking internal cleansing here, folks. As in removing all the toxins in your liver, kidneys, and, uh, other places. And those toxins vacate your body … well, you get the idea.
Now there’s a group effort we can all rally around.
‘We’re all in (the bathroom?) together’
We learned of this phenomenon in a recent New York Times story, and were astounded at the enthusiasm voiced by some of the participants.
“It was a week when we were slammed, and we just needed to pull together as a community,” the Times quoted Michael Godshall, creative director of a Brooklyn viedo marketing company. “It was something we could do where we thought, ‘We’re all in this together.’ ” The entire company, Project Distllry, went through a three-day cleanse.
That must really be one close-knit group.
Um, yummy
The centerpiece of this cutting-edge employee perk seems to be a liquid made from the juices of vegetables and grasses and other flora. The taste? One man quoted in the Times story took a sip of a beet-based potion and declared, “That juice has declared war on everything delicious.”
Mr. Godshall said the compound his team imbibed was “gnarly tasting.”
Nonetheless, this cleansing thing seems to be catching on — at least in New York City. Eric Helms of the Cooler Cleanse Co., told the Times he’s seen a “huge increase in popularity” of workers “cleansing” in group settings.
Apparently the financial industry is a center for such internal toxin removal (insert credit default swaps joke here).
Private poisons
Hey, we’re all for team-building exercises. But a group activity that basically re-enacts the procedure for preparing for a colonoscopy? That seems a little much.
Frankly, we’re sort of protective about our personal toxins. We’ve spent years building them up.
Call us old-fashioned, but when and if we want to get rid of them, we want to do so in private.
One last question: Has anyone looked into the cost of repairs for the overuse of these companies’ sanitary facilities?
