1097852 In the old days, Team Building was accomplished by having everyone in a particular segment of the company go on a three day retreat to push medicine balls up hills together. With the economy being what it is no company, not even mighty ESPN, can afford to give people three days off...to say nothing of the cost these days of medicine balls. So in this episode we replicated what most companies are doing in this area; gathering a group of trouble makers and sitting them down in chairs in a crummy conference room. <object width="440" height="361"><param name="movie" value="http://sports.espn.go.com/broadband/player.swf?mediaId=3765253"/><param name="wmode" value="transparent"/><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"/><embed src="http://sports.espn.go.com/broadband/player.swf?mediaId=3765253" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="440" height="361" allowScriptAccess="always"></embed></object> ESPN would never do this but in our fake ESPN world, the officious lady from Human Resources plays terrible mind games on us. She rolls tape on what we thought were confidential job satisfaction interviews and tries to work us into conflict against each other. We all hate each other by the end of the episode but Video Cowboy gets to swear at the mean HR lady and we are once again a tightly knit group. If anyone in our real HR is reading this, when is the deadline to fill out those insurance selection forms? If I do nothing do I get the same insurance as this year? This reminds me a of real ESPN HR experience. There were about 300 of us gathered for a meeting on the ins and outs of our health care plan. One girl made what could have been a one hour meeting turn into a three hour meeting because of her ridiculous and ridiculously specific questions about coverage policy. In brief, which she wasn't, she wanted to know the exact coverage details were she to be injured while skiing at Vail. It could be she was just about to embark on a skiing trip to Vail and needed the information before faced with the choice of the intermediate hill vs the black diamond run. I'm hoping she was covered to at least 80% when her femur snapped. None of this came up in our fake HR meeting. It was more about the health of our team. We are fit. Ready for more episodes. true 2008-12-16T11:23:12Z 74966 1 2008-12-16T11:23:12Z