The ONLY morale building exercise that ever worked for me was the In Service day when somebody decided that we librarians should spend an hour playing poker with the cops.

Both the cops and the librarians worked for the same township but we had little in common. Theirs was a very male workspace and ethos — and ours was very female.

But after an hour playing cards and schmoozing with a bunch of police officers I learned a lot about who they were as people and came to respect them.

In twenty years of mandatory morale and cohesion building exercises that was the only one that wasn’t just a waste of time for me.