My apologies
to Edwin Starr for that terrible rip-off of ‘War’ in the subject line. Now that that’s out of the way, onto the
entry!
It
is always nice when your job can manage to surprise you. It’s very easy to become skeptical when
you’ve been with the same company for several years or so, and sometimes this
leads you to think that you’ve seen and heard it all when it comes to your
company or, at the very least, your position within the company. This is especially true for me when it comes
to all the trainings I have been apart of with my current job.
Let
me begin by saying that I appreciate a job that’ll train their employees so
they know what they’re talking about.
There are places where you go in and you feel like you might as well
just look up the info on your smartphone instead of ask the employees for help. That’s not the fault of the employees, but
the employers. So, it is cool that my
job decides to actually try to train us in the stuff we’re selling.
However,
there’s a fine line between being well trained and training harder than a
surgeon would be trained. Sometimes my
job goes a bit overboard with all the trainings. Between the computer-based training, the one-on-one trainings
with managers, the department trainings every other month, the larger corporate
trainings we get sent to, and the one-on-one vendor trainings, it’s all a bit
much and it often feels like everyone’s tripping over each other’s feet. You get all the information drilled into
your head again and again and it’s hard to resist the urge to just tell the
trainer, “I GOT IT THE FIRST TEN TIMES I WAS TAUGHT THIS!”
I
mean, really, it’s not like we’re training to go deep undercover to infiltrate
the mafia.
Everything
becomes very repetitive and it’s amazing how certain trainings might change
ever so slightly, but the managers – who must be used to working with some
truly dumb as hell people – feel the need to go over the same things again and
again in excruciating detail. They
always have this worried look on their face like, “Oh, dear lord, I hope this
is sinking in for him. He looks so lost
as I’m explaining this to him!” When,
in reality, I’m not lost – just amused at their ridiculous repetition. I’m not the world’s smartest guy but I can
grasp simple facts and instructions. If
I don’t have a sarcastic smile on my face when somebody tries to ‘train’ me on
something, then in my mind I’m going into autopilot and I only hear a
“wah-wah-wah-wah” sound.
That’s
why, when I get sent to a training and I’m not bored and the trainer is cool,
funny, and laidback, I’m genuinely pleasantly surprised. This was the case earlier in the year when I
was sent to one such training for a week.
I’ve been to one or two similar trainings and it’s always torture. The only bright spot is that I get away from
customers for a few days. This
training, however, was fast-paced and totally laidback. The trainer still seemed to spout the
company line and praised everything our company did, which I somehow refrained
from rolling my eyes, but she was easy-going and funny. Sure, I didn’t learn anything new, per say,
during the entire week that I hadn’t already known, but it was still enjoyable.
Not
since when I was first hired was I as impressed with anything this company had
to show me in the way of training. I just
hope we don’t go backward and revert to the old style of training within a year.
So,
nameless trainer, thank you! You’ll
never know how much you alleviated my apprehension about that week. If I had to be stuck relearning everything I
already knew, I’m glad it was with your class.
More soon from the frontlines...
There’s
nothing quite like having two days off in a row from your job, is there? Sure, most normal jobs might always give you
two days off in a row, especially if you’re working a Monday to Friday job, but
in retail, finding yourself with two days off in a row is an exciting event.
So
you can imagine my surprise when I found myself with three days off in a row. It
was almost as good as hitting the lottery.
It’s an amazing feeling to walk out of your job’s front doors and know
that you won’t have to be back until the fourth days. At that moment, you have the greatest amount of free time you’ll
ever have for the next three days before you have to walk back through those
same doors. The possibilities for your
future are wide open! You could do
anything you want! The sky is the limit
(or at least, so you tell yourself)!
Need to clean the entire house (or, if you are a lowly hourly drone, an
apartment)?
Have to finish editing all seven hundred pictures from that vacation you took a
year ago - the one that everyone is still hounding you about putting up
pictures for?
Have
to make several shopping trips to buy things you hate wasting your time
shopping for?
Want to go to the movies and watch six new releases??
Want to finally do a real nice detailing of your car?
Well, now you can! And if you can’t get
to something the first day, YOU STILL HAVE TWO DAYS LEFT!
That’s
how the thinking goes when you first leave the office, or the store, or
whatever jail happens to be your workspace.
You’re going to work on that story you’ve wanted to do justice in those
three days instead of churn out one mediocre blog entry. Hell YEAH, you are!
But, oh, how quickly that feeling of invincibility fades!
That
first day might feel pretty damn good, no doubt about it! You’re still getting lots done. You’re relaxing, not even thinking about
work. And hey, the weather is
perfect! It was as if Mother Nature was
giving you this perfect day to go out and get things done. It’s okay if you haven’t started that
story. You still have two days left!!!
That second day is still enjoyable because you still have that last day
off. This is still a day where anything
can happen! Perhaps you’ll mix some
real housework during the day with a quiet stroll around the neighborhood with
your spouse and dog(s). Besides, it’s
still okay if you haven’t started that story.
You still have that last day to stay up all night working on! You don’t need sleep that first day
back. It’s a short shift, anyway!
Then that last day hits. You wake up,
and despite not drinking the previous night, you have a heavy feeling in your
gut. It’s that, “Oh, god, why did I do
what I did last night?” feeling. That
feeling of completely wasting your previous two days and realizing you don’t
have enough time to do all the things you wanted to do in the remaining time
you have left. That dread of having to
deal with customers whose life stories you have long stopped caring about. That dread of having to fix issues your
superiors hand to you because shit rolls downhill and they put it all off for
three days. Soon, it becomes all you
can think about and now, instead of enjoying that beautiful day Mother Nature
is giving you on your last day off, you silently curse her because it’s as if
Mother Nature’s mocking you.
“Have
to go back to work? What a bummer! I plan on giving everyone else sunshine and
75 degrees for another day. And then
when you have your next day off, I’m planning on unleashing a typhoon all day
long, SUCKER!!”
So,
instead of writing that story and getting something done (and feeling pretty
good about it until you start to question the writing quality of it), you just
churn out that mediocre blog entry.
I
hope this has been more than mediocre for you all. I really need to focus and push myself to write. I’ve been slacking way too long on this
shit.
I
seriously don’t know where the three days went. I just know that it doesn’t make going back to work any easier
knowing I had three days away. Here’s
hoping my next day off arrives quickly!
More soon from the frontlines...