Sharks, trivia, and sunshine: My first Spark Summer Team Building Day

My first Spark Summer Team Building Day was a memorable one. In my interview, I did ask: “Will I have opportunities to hit a golf ball into a shark’s mouth in 32-degree heat?” (I’ll explain later), so had been looking forward to this opportunity for a long time.

We happened to have chosen the hottest day of the year, so it was good we hadn’t selected activities with too much physical exertion (that’s not part of the PR job description, after all).

We started the day at Plonk Hackney, a crazy golf venue that, unlike a lot of similar places, was actually pretty crazy – and we mostly discovered that none of us is as good at golf as we thought we were. But then, since we had to hit balls into volcanoes and at one point use our clubs as snooker cues, perhaps that’s not surprising. Shout out to Tris who emerged victorious. So far, no one has admitted to getting the worst score, but we will post it loudly on LinkedIn when we find out.

After a picnic lunch, we headed to Quiz Boxing in Camden for some competitive team trivia. Some of us were a little disappointed to discover that the name isn’t literal, so nobody would be getting hurt for not knowing how many copies of the Magna Carta still exist. Instead, we were placed in paired teams in a boxing-themed arena to answer quickfire questions, with the ability to use virtual ‘punches’ to strategically steal points and block other teams’ correct answers.

We finished up the day in typically British summer fashion, i.e. in a pub garden, with cold beer and cold cocktails – a way to finally make the most of the amazing weather. As the sun dipped behind the beer-garden parasols, the clink of glasses and the easy chatter felt like the perfect soundtrack to a team that genuinely enjoys spending time together outside the pitch decks and press releases. I may have joined Spark for the career opportunities, but days like this remind me that it’s the people – and the shared laughs over missed putts and trivia triumphs – that make the job special.