8:45 AM: Gig-economy contractors arrive at Adventure Woods™ in an extra-long vehicle reserved using Skedaddle™.
To foster communication and team spirit, half the seats in the vehicle are removed and contractors must hold onto poles and straps, as if they were in some sort of a large-scale, rideshare transit option with a predetermined route where you pay with cards or exact change only.
9 AM: Team-Building Exercise #1: Brake-Fast/Fast-Break.
Continental breakfast is arranged on a table, while another table across the room is empty. Facilitated by me, a PostMates™ courier is expected to deliver food from one table (“the fancy burrito shop”) to another (“my apartment”) around a series of low-hanging nets called “congestion zones,” “carrying a backpack” that is actually a Lyft™, Uber™, Gett™, and Juno™ driver (all the same person) blindfolded walking on a log backwards. In a classic role reversal, the goal of Brake-Fast/Fast-Break is to engender empathy and communication between these two gig economy contractors without fully elucidating their organizing restrictions as legally-designated contractors.
9:35 AM: Finish activity. Breakfast is served.
9:37 AM: Breakfast is finished.
10 AM: Team-Building Exercise #2: Trust Fall Tips
Participants encounter a tall platform. Each contractor who would be entitled to receive a tip through their app — including my Wag™ dog walker, my Rover™ cat-sitter, and my Groomit™ rabbit groomer (all different people) — must climb the platform. As facilitator, it is my responsibility to inform participants that climbing the “platform” symbolizes you logging into your app’s “platform” to calculate your daily tips. Contractors turn around at the edge of the platform and fall into the arms of their fellow participants — a symbolic gesture of disclosing cash tips to the app shareholders — and by catching the contractor, the participants symbolize the shareholders using the full tip amount to calculate the lowest wages possible per state minimum wage laws.
12 PM: Team-Building Exercise #3: Step-In/Step-Out
A twist on Truth or Dare, contractors must form a “Circle of Trust.” Contractors — including my Handy™ housemaid, the custodians at my multinational white-collar office job who I just found out are actually contractors, and my Handy™ wall-picture-hanger — must step into the circle. When they answer a question in the affirmative, they must step forward, form a smaller circle, and then repeat. I read the questions, which are always, “Do you want to keep working after n+1 hours?,” with another hour added for each smaller concentric circle. The smallest circle is deemed the most trustworthy and receives five-star reviews from fifty different bot reviewers, including the custodians, who starting today have an app that lets anyone, anywhere review them on anything.
1:00 PM: Lunch
Lunch is served, but alternatively, contractors are also invited to instead play another round of Step-In/Step-Out, with the same award offered. Those who choose lunch must order and pick it up away from Adventure Woods premises, pay for their lunch themselves, and return in time for the next activity.
1:13 PM: Entrepreneurs!
All contractors — including my unicorn-contractor who I pay to let me watch him have sex with my wife through Thrinder™ and Cash App™ — break out into “start-up groups” to design, pitch, and compete to “receive funding” for the next apptivity. Entrepreneurs will be judged by their apptivity’s low infrastructure costs, its cost-free contractor incentive program, its independence of means/hours such that a court would not find them “controlled by an employer,” and of course, the apptivity’s fun! If you love what you’re contracted to do, it doesn’t feel like work because it’s definitely not work. It’s a game.
3:00 PM: Apptivity Play!
Winning apptivity is played, facilitated by me. Afterwards, winners sign their Winner’s Certificate, a document that hands over the apptivity’s intellectual property rights to me.
4:00 PM: Closing Ceremony
My courier contractor, my driver contractor, my three pet-care contractors, my cleaner contractor, my office custodial contractors, my wall-picture-hanger contractor, and my lovemaking contractor choose to go on strike for the closing ceremony until I recognize their bargaining unit and allow a unionization election. Instead, I cancel the closing ceremonies, drive the Skedaddle™ over to another, nearby Edith Macy™ team-building center, and hire some new contractors.