What's cooking and why

Several days ago the monthly work breakfast was held, an event the work team look forward to because it's a chance to socialise on work time, to interact with others from off-site locations and get a free breakfast at the same time. There's benefit for the company too as it fosters better relationships between individuals and the different departments and because the responsibility for hosting the breakfast rotates between team members it builds unity and teamwork between people that might not necessarily work together in a typical work day.

It was my turn to host it along with two others and that meant a little planning (the two girls did that) for the food based on attendees' dietary needs and number of attendees of course. They went shopping for the stuff and on Thursday morning I arrived a couple hours early to work to help with the breakfast preparation.

I'd decided I'd simply do what I was told by those two girls (safer that way) and ended up, as expected, on barbeque cooking detail.

They did the cutting up of stuff, the fruit platter, as I prepared the barbeque for cooking on. I was cooking bacon and eggs, mushrooms and tomato halves. When it was hot, one of the girls started placing the stuff (under my expert guidance) onto the hotplate as I needed...me, with tongs in one hand and an egg-slice in the other, did the cooking. It all went really smoothly (it's nice to have a side-kick when barbequing) and we ended up filling a platter with the good stuff in no time. I then toasted split English muffins on the hotplate and breakfast was served.

Ok, it wasn't served for me as there was a second round of cooking to do which I got straight into as above, but once done it was time for me to eat and hang out with the rest of the team to socialise. An hour and a half later we all went off to our respective work locations feeling pretty happy (I cleaned the barbeque first and we all cleaned up of course) and the day went on as usual...better than usual I guess because everyone enjoys those work breakfasts.

I know some people don't like this sort of thing in the workplace but I don't mind; it's really quite a positive thing to get the team interacting like that and getting people into a social environment, people who work apart or in different locations, can help them relax and connect so that when work kicks off again people know each other better which is productive for inter-team communication and overall productivity.

Have you ever had such a thing in your workplace and if so was it of a positive benefit or not? Was it simply awkward? Did doing social things like this with the team help people communicate and interact better in the workplace or were people negative about it and uninvested? Did you help or did you sit back and let other's do all the work? Feel free to comment.