Our Team is Now Closer
Some of the best team-building exercises I've partaken in are, paradoxically, very similar to the work I have to do every day. As an employee at a health foods grocery store, the most fun I've had while team-building always involves activities and games regarding the work that goes into food. Team-building experiences that are relevant to my work experiences seem more meaningful, and they have always brought me closer to my job, as well as closer to my colleagues and fellow employees.
For example, for the first day of one such team-building weekend we all got together and volunteered at a local farm where we get the majority of the zucchini at our store. This, aside from being hard work that we could gripe about as a unit (thus making us feel like friends in arms), was highly enriching. On rides home together, we chatted about how interesting it was to have a hand in the pre-production of the food we would end up selling. Perhaps a customer would take a zucchini up to the counter, and this would jolt us out of a sense of workplace grind into an exciting sense of, "oh! I might have planted that!"
On the second day of that team-building weekend, we had a PLU relay race. For those who don't know, every time you bring fresh produce to a cashier, the cashiers type in a number, called a PLU, to determine the price per pound of whatever produce you bought. For the PLU relay race, there were four teams of four runners each. The first person held a baton, then ran to the next person. Before the baton was passed, the first person had to give the PLU for a piece of paper given to the second person. This bit of friendly competition was a relevant game, and we all had a blast and our team is now closer as a result.