Friday, November 21, 2008

Worst. Job. Ever. Part 2: Training Day

Saturday arrived, and I donned my all-black uniform and found my way to Moscone West at 10:30 in the morning where I found myself in a pool 200 similarly dressed convention workers.  Of all of those people, who walked in at the same time as me?  The Foot.

Yes there was annoying small talk.  No I didn’t like it.  Yes, I did opt to sit far, far away from him.

The training session was called to order and we were subjected to what can only be described as the most poorly executed nametag distribution process imaginable.  You would think that a company that hires people to run registration tables for 6000 convention-goers wouldn’t have any trouble passing out nametags to 200 employees.  And yet, they did!

Once most people had their nametags, we had a short break and were herded into a large conference room where our minds would be blown by a killer Power Point presentation.  Our host for the rest of the day, and head supervisor, was the worst public speaker I’ve ever been forced to endure.  We’ll call him Gordon.

Gordon started his 4-hour speaking engagement by complimenting us on our uniforms.  He loved, Loved, LOVED the sea of black.  Nothing could possibly look more sharp and professional.  After showering us with praise, Gordon turned on the charm and the presentation began.

For four long and tedious hours, Gordon ran through the slides and read each one verbatim.  Rather than expand upon what was written on the slide, he felt that certain parts of each sentence needed to be highlighted, so he would repeat random parts of each sentence three times.  As he did this, he interrupted himself to explain that repetition helps with memory.  It sounded something like this:

“I just want to orientate you on a few things.  I have a presentation that will orientate you on all of the aspects of this show.  Please pay attention and feel free to read along while I orientate you.  People learn different ways, so you can listen or you can read.  I’ll orientate you by repeating things that are important.  So, let’s start.  The slide here says, ‘The software company develops many products that used by consumers and businesses.’ Now, because I think there are some parts of this statement that are important to remember, I’ll repeat it.  Feel free to take notes.  This will all be very helpful to you to understand what this show is all about.  Now, here it says ‘products used by consumers and businesses’.  Did you get that?  ‘Consumers and businesses’.  Yeah, that’s a pretty big deal.”

Uhh….needless to say, I wanted to die.  Nothing that he said was important to the job.  Later we went through the ground rules of the job.

  1. All black uniform.
  2. No eating of your own food and especially no eating the convention food.
  3. No reading. No iPods. No cell phones. No talking.
  4. You are allowed 2 15-minute breaks and 1 30-minute lunch break each day.
  5. At all times, you must appear to be excited to be there. Doing this will make the convention-goers excited.
  6. Anytime someone passes you, look at their nametag and call them by their name.

Gordon then went on to discuss lunch:

“If the convention-goers want to partake lunch, then they partake lunch in the large dining room.  Some of them may approach you and try to partake lunch in a different room, but you must tell them to partake lunch in the large dining room.  Now if any of you have your 30-minute lunch break, you can partake your lunch in the staff office.  That is the only place you can partake lunch.  Do not try to partake lunch in the large dining room.  That is the room where the convention goers partake lunch, unless they are part of a special session and are partaking lunch elsewhere.”

Have you figured out why my ears started bleeding and a part of me died on the inside?  Was it his decision to use the word partake? Yes.  Was it because he over-used the word? Yes, the word partake should only be used once a day.  Was it because he incorrectly used it? Yes, “partake” doesn’t make sense unless a preposition like “of” or “in” is used with it.

And this went on throughout the day.

While he was discussing lunch, the natives were getting restless.  I’ll admit that I was a bit hungry too.  I did get there before 11am.  At this point it was after 2:30pm, and there was no sign of lunch.  Some of the more vocal members of the crowd started complaining.

“I’m hungry,” whined the woman behind me.  “This is wrong.  They gotta let us eat.  When’s lunch?  I’m huuuuuuungry.”

At first her cries went unnoticed, but then other people started chiming in.  The revolution had begun.

Gordon kept talking about partaking lunch, then realized that the groaning crowd needed to be addressed.

“Okay people,” he said.  “It sounds like we need a little break.  Let’s have a 5-minute break to stretch our legs.”

“But I’m HUUUUUUUUNNNNNGRY!” shouted the crazy woman behind me.  “Where’s my food?  I’m hungry!”

“You can get food when we finish at 4:00.”

“What?!” She was indignant, and judging by looks of dismay that stared back at Gordon, she wasn’t the only one.  “But I’m hungry now!”

(Did I mention that these were all adults?  All adults that were older than me?  Older by several years?)

Gordon was oblivious to their cries, and we then went on our 5-minute break.  Once we returned he spent an hour explaining to us where people could partake lunch (again) and where the certification classes were being held--except he didn’t pronounce the word “certification” correctly.  Rather than stressing the first syllable, he stressed the second, and repeatedly said “cerTIFication”, thus making my brain hurt.

The training session continued with Gordon repeating the same unnecessary information.  He spent 45 minutes recapping everything, re-read the slides verbatim, and repeated random parts of sentences for no good reason.  It was excruciating.

I suppose part of it had to do with his audience, but, quite frankly, it was offensive to sit through a 5-hour condescension session.  Gordon wrapped up the training by going through the uniform piece-by-piece.

“Now just so we’re all clear, you need to wear a black shirt, black pants, black shoes, black socks.  Does everybody get that?  Black shirt, black pants, black shoes, black socks.  Everything is black.  Your shirt is black.  Your pants are black.  Your shoes are black.  Your socks are black.  Black uniform.  No color.  All black.  Do we understand?  Here let me show you want I’m wearing.  I have a black shirt on.  My pants are black  I’m wearing a black belt too.  My shoes are black. And I have black socks on as well.  This is what you should wear while you’re working.  I think it looks sharp.  The all black.  It’s nice.  It’s really professional.  All black.”

No, I’m not kidding.

At long last, we were excused, and everyone was excited…to finally eat some lunch.

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