Bad Training Events

Have you ever attended a bad training event? No, I mean a BAD TRAINING EVENT? I've had just such an experience. It's at a place I worked at before. Returning means that I get to experience all the new employee, on-boarding stuff that you would normally expect--exit the building if it is on fire, don't surf for porn on the company equipment, try not to show up hungover too often--you know, the standard stuff the have to tell you in order to keep the insurance costs down.

Well I have a new record for bad training. It was so bad that I'm compelled the share the badness as a way of purging it from my memory. The training was for all employees. Correction, it was for all employees that had not already attended the training with their departments, so yeah, I was with all the losers.

The training was actually an e-learning video-type event projected on the screen so that we could all suffer together. E-learning--projected for a group--together. I think the underlying goal was to create a common enemy in the form of the HR department. Mission accomplished.

While suffering through the training I became distracted. And began to doodle. Then began to write. Doodle induced writing is never a good thing with me. It has caused me trouble in the past. I predict it will cause me trouble in the future. I think of it as a way to maintain my sanity when presented with overwhelming levels of stupidity.

This is what I wrote, slightly edited to protect the guilty parties.

This is the worst training I have ever experienced. Well, there was that one training event back at [redacted]. It was during my time on the shop floor. I was a Saw and Shear Operator II and the training topic was safety. The instructor's name was Jim "Three Fingers" Wilson. As his nickname implies, he only had three fingers on his right hand. Though I was never told directly, the rumor in the workplace grapevine was that he lost them in a nasty workplace accident. I think they said it involved a press break.

As the training progressed, 'Three Fingers' would raise his crushed appendage and shout out comments such as, "See what I mean?", while pointing with his good left hand.

I doubt many of us remember any specifics of the training. We were too traumatized and shocked. To my last days I will remember that trainer and his mangled hand.

So to be clear, this recent on-boarding, new hire collecting e-learning training, where I learned to exit a burning building, to avoid porn surfing on the clock and to not ever show up hungover was a new record that surpassed the previous high mark, err, low mark I mean.