I like the way I work and the way my team works. I mean, we are just a bunch of workers who go about doing our job diligently and completing the necessary within the time frame allocated. When asked to help others, we will if we can - most of the time we do help - and many a times we go out of our way and out of our work scope to.
At the same time, we play hard, when we can. We play chess during lunch time and after office hours. We laugh together and maken together. In fact, we make it a point to have a quarterly lunch/dinner session for the whole team. The team works well with the rest of the other teams too.

But recently, we are hearing people gossiping about our chess playing. Some even commented that we are laughing too loud. I scoffed at them all. In the whole office, my team is the only team with life. It helps that my boss is not interested in our 'other' activities, just as long as we do our job and do it well. To him, whether we stay late, play chess or not, go for coffee breaks or not, is not an issue and neither is he interested to know. He understands the need for us to release steam. He understands that it does not matter what we do outside of work, as long as we do out work well. Thats all he asks of us and for that, we respect him and we will do our best for him.

My team has gotten the short end of the stick. Because we are supporting the infrastructure, we are in fact, supporting everyone in the company, even those in our division. So sometimes, many teams, think that we 'owe' them because they are 'users' to us. Its sad but true. After more than 3 years here, I have learnt to take things in my stride and 'giving' back when I am able to. Its just my little way of telling people that they should not take our team for granted.