Not A Strike But A Total Strike-Out

While not a start-up, we were a brand-new office of an existing company with almost all new starters. After a few weeks, it was decided that we needed to do some “team building”.

This involved us all having to go out to do ten-pin bowling at an alley in a nearby city one Friday evening. We would, we were told, become a better team by being divided up into ten groups of four people, each split into teams of two, play off against each other, the winners would then play against other winners, yadda, yadda, yadda.

Upon arrival at the alley, the Big Boss greeted us. She was wearing a bowling shirt with her name on it.

We drew lots for who was on what team and went to the lanes. At that point, Big Boss pulled out a bowling bag with her name embroidered on it and her own pair of bowling balls. They had her name embossed on them in gold.

The other person bowling with her was ever so smug; there was no way he could lose, being paired with a professional bowler.

She was awful. Not just splits or the like — most of her bowls went into the gutter. A couple of them were so slow the machinery didn’t recognise that a bowl had happened and she got three or four goes at knocking down a single pin.

The two of them were knocked out of the game in the first round.

After the game was done (I got to the third round!), we all went for the free food and drink. People asked Big Boss gently why she was out of practice or whatever had caused such a poor result for her.

It turned out she’d never gone bowling in her life. Not once.

The shirt, the bag, and the balls had all been bought specially for this one event.

There was a massive silence from everybody that I can still hear today while we digested this news.

After one round of chicken wings and a single pint of beer each, she got up and said she was closing the tab and we could all go home. She promptly left.

Next week at work, someone found the shirt, bag, and balls up for sale on a popular online auction site, whilst Big Boss was frosty with us all for weeks.

It’s only now, five years later, that it has suddenly dawned on me: we were supposed to let her win, weren’t we?