Most bizarre HR initiative ever

We were two days away from a massive prod deployment. Everyone is running on 4 hours of sleep. The Jira board looked like a literal warzone.

Then we get a calendar block from HR. Mandatory attendance. Subject: Unwind & Align.

I honestly thought they were giving us free lunch. Nope.

We walk into the conference room and there are printouts of mandalas and boxes of wax crayons on the tables. An external "happiness coach" in a linen shirt starts talking about how coloring brings order to a chaotic mind.

My tech lead was shaking because a database migration was failing and he was being forced to color a lotus with a blunt orange crayon. The coach walks up to him, pats his shoulder and says "I sense blocked energy here bhai, let it flow".

Tech lead just stared at him.

We colored in silence for 45 minutes. Then went back to our desks and worked till 2 AM.