Are you familiar with Buttspell? It’s the usual fun group activity to ‘break the ice’ especially when you find yourself in a newly formed group or team.
How do I play buttspell?
You just have to spell anything using your hmm…butt. You can spell anything as short as your first name, your favorite place,game, color among others. Or it can be as long as a phrase or sentence. Anything goes with buttspell.
So butspell is a game, right?
Not necessarily. It can be as simple as a quick ice breaker, while others use this to serve as a ‘sweet’ punishment (like coming in late from break). Most of the time some call center trainers use it as a consequence when a group lost in an activity.
Okay, since Buttspell seemed to be a fun activity, why do you hate people doing it in a Call Center Training?
Respect for Hybrid Trainees
Unlike in a traditional classroom setup, call center trainees have interesting profiles. You can be in a class with newly graduates, a housewife for 10 years, an ex-seminarian, a former high school teacher, a father in his forties, a band member, among other interesting backgrounds.
Would it be easy for an ex-seminarian to do buttspell in a class? How would you think will the former high school teacher react upon seeing this activity?
With this reality into consideration, I always wanted to make sure that the training environment will be filled with respect in every way. I don’t want to force them to do it inasmuch as I don’t want them to feel embarrassed and violated after doing buttspell.
Believe me, it might look funny when you do it, but the different impression will always be there, especially for the people who witnessed that ‘fun’ act.
To avoid cases of Sexual Harrassment in the workplace
You can’t help it when other people would think differently when they see such a scene. Again, I don’t want this activity to start an experience that will get these folks into trouble.
I remembered when I observed a certain class (not in the call center) and the trainer forced a trainee to do buttspell because she made a mistake in answering a question. I heard guys said “wow“, “lower“, “slower” and those unnecessary comments that I didn’t expect to hear from them. Can you just imagine what will happen to that trainee if the guys saw her as one of their *** objects in the class?
Encourages ‘repeat mistakes’
Unfortunately, some trainees sees it as an encouragement to get everyone’s attention.
I remembered when a trainer raised a concern about her trainee coming late to the class. Apparently, she observed that she always did it (on purpose) so she can do buttspell as soon as she arrives.
If the purpose of doing buttspell is to punish their mistakes, then this situation defeats the purpose, would you agree?
What do you think?
In the end, I will stand on the reasons I stated here. I will never ask them to do buttspell and I will never allow them to do it in my class.
How about you? Have you witnessed someone doing buttspell? What can you say about it? Let me know your thoughts so we can discuss things here.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Buttspell may be fun for some but embarrassing for others.
I was a victim once when I spent too much time in the pantry thereby making myself the “ice breaker” when I went back to the training room. It irritated me when the guys that I had the training with started laughing and the other people (those not included in the training) went inside to witness the slightly embarrassing situation. It’s a good thing that I was comfortable with my so-called classmates since they are my colleagues. Nevertheless, it’s something that I don’t want to do again.
———-
Hi Pringdeeh,
Thanks for sharing your experience. I hope you’ll never have to do it again.
i experienced it during my training day at excelAsia. it was so embarrassing at first because i never done it before. my trainer caught me speaking in “tagalog” twice so as a punishment, i have to shake my booty,, ha-ha.. its fun but, yes its kinda irritating, specially when your classmates keep laughing at you.