Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 17, 1990 TAG: 9006150794
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: C7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Deirdre Fanning The New York Times
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Dressed in shorts, sweatshirts and sunglasses and doused in equal quantities of suntan lotion and dread, executives and their families head for America's baseball diamonds, wooded groves and picnic grounds to eat hamburgers and corn on the cob under the eyes of their employees.
It's corporate picnic season again.
At noon on a recent gray, muggy day in Union, N.J., employees of Maher Terminals Inc., a privately owned terminal operator for the ports of Newark and Elizabeth, N.J., were beginning to arrive at the Old Cider Mill Grove, a conference complex, for their annual wingding.
Parking their cars in a field across the road from the picnic site, employees queued up before the balloon-festooned entrance to the grove.
Clowns dressed in Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny costumes entertained the children as they entered the park.
But the picnic was not just designed to show employees and their families a good time.
These festivities also give management perhaps its only opportunity to blend in with the lower ranks - to dress down, play games, eat with plastic forks and show off the kids.
"The picnic allows us all to interact socially," said Kathy Ogle, a Maher Terminals assistant vice president.
"It brings back the feeling of family that the company had before it grew so large."
At the picnic, the corporate hierarchy was indeed nearly invisible.
Executives and longshoremen alike, bedecked in sneakers, shorts and muscle T-shirts, were downing beer and playing games with gusto.
Perhaps the only exception was the founding family.
Led by Brian Maher, chief executive, and his father, Michael, who founded the company more than 50 years ago and is still chairman, the Maher family was distinguishable by nattier dress - polo rather than T-shirts.
Joined by his wife and children, Brian Maher shook hands and admired babies.
But all this temporary togetherness can be perturbing to some.
"I've been going to these things for 14 years and frankly, I'm sick of picnics," said one executive, grumbling about having to spend his Saturday with people he has seen all week and refusing to give his name.
As David Berg, a professor at the Yale School of Management, puts it: "Picnics are a reflection of the context in which they occur. If an employee is cynical and mistrustful of the corporation's hierarchy, the announcement of a company picnic will be interpreted as a cynical attempt to `buy us off.' "
Like many companies, Maher Terminal has hired Sid Rothbard to convert cynics into happy picnickers.
Rothbard, who calls himself "Mr. Picnic," is president of Recreation Picnic Service Inc., which he claims is the nation's oldest corporate picnic company.
The company stages about 220 such picnics in the New York metropolitan area - sometimes as many as five a day - during a season that stretches from May through September.
Clients include Procter & Gamble, Bristol-Myers, Citibank, Ingersoll-Rand and Merrill Lynch.
One picnic it organized earlier this year for the Hoescht Celanese Corp. drew about 3,000 picnickers, but the one for Maher numbered only 650 or so.
A former physical education teacher, Rothbard, 74, was jogging around the site dressed in sweatpants and waving a bullhorn at clusters of idle picnickers.
"The goal for a good picnic is that every person take part in at least one game," he said, then dashed off to the horseshoe pitching tournament.
"I'm always looking at the crowd, to see how the participation is going."
Spotting some employees seated at picnic tables, he raised his bullhorn and bellowed: "Attention! Everybody over to the hot potato game now beginning across the field!"
The biggest draw was the softball game, where employees from Maher's headquarters office in Jersey City were battling those from the branches in Fleet and Millburn for the 1990 company championship.
Diplomatically, Maher watched intently from the sidelines, cheering for both sides.
For many Maher employees, the game was the picnic's highlight, pitting the Jersey City "suits" against the more blue-collar staff of the Fleet-Millburn team.
For the latter team, the day's 24-10 victory was sweet indeed.
Rothbard said Maher's picnic was particularly festive.
"Some groups don't want the egg throw, so we give them a water balloon contest," he explains.
"But this picnic has a lot of everything - they've got bunting up, they've got second-place door prizes. You don't see that everywhere."
By late afternoon, the picnic was winding down. Some guests were so loose they were wearing balloons on their heads as hats.
Rothbard, meantime, pronounced the picnic a success: "I'd give it an 8 out of 10."
by CNB