Tuesday, May 30, 2006

It's probably what I would have done

This morning we had a networked training seminar with the Bermuda team. Our trainer, June, was physically present in our training room and web-conferenced in with Bermuda.

She opened with "Ok, I know none of you have used this software ever before, so what do you think we should do to book this trade?"

It seems suggesting that HR present information in their training seminars will get you ignored, as they have decided to stick with the old policy of training-by-asking open-ended-questions-to-which-the-trainees-could-not-possibly-know-the-answer. Anyway.

Undoubtedly spurred on by the presence of the Bermuda people, our trainer galloped through the first thirty minutes of her presentation. She stopped a total of zero times for (our) questions.

Thus, presented with a new piece of software which I will never use, and ascertaining that the trainer was going to continue to do her best to avoid any and all interaction with the class (thereby maintaining the illusion of professionalism and competence she had established with the Bermuda folks) I decided to put my time to somewhat better use and cruise the internet.

There was one stoppage due to technical difficulties. Rather than listen to June talk to the Bermuda loud speaker ("Can you see the screen now? How about now? Ok? Are you there?"). Most of the class decided to grab some coffee from the conference room.

So, an hour and a half later, I wasn't paying attention when the presentation finally ended and was caught a little off-guard when the trainer started addressing the class again.

"Alright, that will look more familiar for those of you who use this on a daily basis. I guess that's it. Any questions?"

When the Bermuda loud speaker broke in:

"I'm sorry, June, what was that? We had you muted down here."


-t

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The "Bermuda" team? As in the island nation of Bermuda? Dude, I'd be actively petitioning for a transfer.

And thank God for the mute button. I'd never make it through a conference call without it.

Tom said...

No, no. Not a conference call. A web-conference training seminar.

Twenty people in a room here, twenty people in a room down there. The guy running the show down there muted the trainer for the whole room.

It was great.