Plain Stupidity or Pure Stubbornness?
I have just returned from a 2½ days/2 nights experiential learning type of event organised by my company. The purpose of this is to instill the spirit of team work and to excel in how we do things as an individual, team and a company.
So like all other experiential learning type of events, there must be a series of activities that you go through, and from there "understand" what went wrong and what went right.
I really enjoyed myself and got to know a lot of diverse people from all the different offices in Malaysia and "worked" with them in these activities as a team although I have to say, some people are just a pain in the neck.
There was this activity where each team was given a 6ft pipe with many random small holes. One side of the pipe was sealed and it was placed upright with the sealed part as the bottom. A ping pong ball was dropped into the pipe and the team's mission was to get the ping pong ball out by pouring water into the pipe.
As there wasn't enough members in a team to accomplish this, we decided to collaborate with 3 more teams to get the task done. So some people were busy blocking those holes with their fingers and some were getting water from the lake nearby and pouring it down the pipe so that the ping pong ball could float up.
At the beginning of this process, there was this girl who decided to take her own initiative and acted without consulting others.
She took some big rocks and started to put them down the pipe. I guess she was thinking along the line that her actions would raise the water level, but she failed to see that these rocks would weigh down the ping pong ball.
When I saw her doing that, I asked "Wouldn't that be blocking the ping pong ball from floating up?".
The girl looked at me, gave me a very icy look and said "Maybe".
Then she continued to put more rocks into the pipe.
I was like... "What the ...?!!!". Is this plain stupidity or just pure stubbornness?? I was so pissed but I kept telling myself to keep my mouth shut. If I didn't, an argument would surely ensue.
Ended up, indeed her actions did not help much and we changed to another pipe to complete the task.
I am so glad that this girl is not someone that I need to work with in a long run.
