A quiet wheel for a loud room

It was one of those company events where you’re supposed to be a team, but everyone’s just a little too aware of being watched. Someone handed me the tablet with the wheel on it and said, ‘You pick something.’ I just wanted to find a way for us all to be people for a minute, not colleagues.

The moment the atmosphere shifted

I spun the wheel, and it landed on ‘Charades with a Twist.’ A few people groaned playfully, but mostly there was this ripple of curiosity. The twist was that you had to act out your prompt using only your face. No hands, no body, just these wild, exaggerated expressions.We split into small groups, and the self-consciousness just melted. You’d see someone across the room scrunching their face or bugging their eyes out, and their teammates would be clutching their sides. It wasn’t about getting it right. It was about the shared absurdity of the attempt.

Laughter that wasn't about winning

The best part was watching the managers try it. Our usually very serious department head was trying to mime ‘eating a very sour lemon’ while also conveying ‘surprise.’ His face was a masterpiece of confusion. We were all just howling, him included.There was no score kept, no final round. We just kept spinning for new prompts until the pizza arrived. The competition completely fell away. It became about the collective reaction, the shared ‘oh no’ when a tricky one came up, the unified cheer when someone finally guessed it.

The sound of a real break

Afterwards, the room just hummed with a different kind of energy. It was quieter, but warmer. People were talking in little clusters, not about work, but replaying the funniest moments from the game.

What was left on the wheel

We never even got to half the options. I glanced at the wheel later and saw all these other possibilities we could have tried. But it didn’t matter. What we did was enough.