The benefits did not last. Eventually, she said, “I realized that all that gossiping was causing me to get more disgruntled than I would have been if I had just kept my head down. It was basically creating steam instead of blowing it off.”

In a #MeToo era when sensitivity concerns are in overdrive, gossip is hardly the only potential hazard at work outings, especially ones involving alcohol.

Recalling her days at a big jewelry company, Barbara Palumbo, 46, in Decatur, Ga., enjoyed going out with friends after work, “but the mandatory nonsense is just that,” she said, “especially with more and more stories of work-related harassment coming into the light. Who wants the obligation of going bowling with the creepy guy from the Wichita office who walks around with his fly unzipped?”

This is not to say that company outings yield nothing beyond expense reports for managers, however.

Now the company outing or retreat is essentially just a different way to work.

When she was an intern with the legal department of the Texas Rangers baseball team during law school, Daley Epstein, now an attorney in Dallas, saw an employee softball game on the diamond of the team’s stadium as an opportunity for self-marketing for younger staff members. Although the game was just for fun, junior employees could also use it to “showcase their competitive side and leadership skills on the field,” Ms. Epstein, 27, said, so that the “the manager who witnessed it may later decide they had what it takes to run the next major project. ”

Company outings can also collapse — or even invert — office hierarchies.

When Dina Kaplan was helping run a video-sharing platform called Blip earlier this decade, she and the other founders helped organize a paintball excursion for their employees. The outing gave the staff a chance to plug away at management with impunity. “I wanted to hide on the field but wasn’t sure if that looked cowardly to the team,” added Ms. Kaplan, who came away with black-and-blue welts. “The irony is that I was afraid to look afraid.”