Training Day

One thing they like to do to employees in the corporate world is to train us, as if we were circus animals.

I have all sorts of training certificates buried somewhere in the rubble on my desk. I have been trained in CPR, safe driving, ethical behavior, even diversity (Did you know we’re not all the same?).

For the past week, I have been undergoing new employee training. Keep in mind, I have been working here since 2002. But, it was only a year ago that I was made an official employee, after being a contractor. Hence, I am a new employee.

The first day, I was kept in a room and made to watch a lot of Power Point presentations. Nothing stimulates the mind like a good Power Point. Or seven.

Then, I went to safety training. This was also a positive experience, as I got to watch a number of videos, including one entirely about ladders. OK, I’m being facetious. It was about stairs, too.

Did you know that there are 17,000 ladder-related accidents annually in the U.S.? Neither did I. A couple of nuggets I gleaned from the video were “never use a ladder as anything but a ladder,” and “each trip up and down a set of stairs is a new adventure.” I take the elevator every day, so I’m not sure how much this is all going to help me. But I have scrapped my plans to use my ladder as a sailboat.

We saw a video on automobile accidents, which reminded me of when I was in ROTC in high school. On days when outdoor activities got cancelled, they would show us uplifting movies with names likes “Mechanized Death” and “Wheels of Tragedy” in order to scare us to death for when we actually started driving.

One of the safety trainers really kept me off balance, because I never knew when or if he was joking. He told us that he had never rented a DVD or a VHS movie, and the last movie he saw at the theatres was “Jaws.” Not relevant, but interesting. He didn’t really explain his reasoning. I suspect he’s a Mennonite.

He showed us one picture of a van that had been in an accident on Interstate 16 in Georgia. He told us that the van had careened off the road, and gone into a field, and somehow had hit the only pine tree for miles around. If that wasn’t irony enough, then he said, “And do you know what this guy did for a living?”

I didn’t.

He said, “He was a forester.” Wait, am I supposed to laugh? What are the odds? Then he said, “Of course, this was a fatality.” Oh, so I don’t laugh. I don’t think Mr.-never-watches-a-movie would like me laughing. He’d already scolded me once for checking my Blackberry during a video, saying we could all go “check our little e-mails during the next break.” I bet he’s never read one of those, either.

Later on, we learned to use a fire extinguisher. I’m not sure all this safety training was necessary. Nobody is going to die in the office where I work, except of boredom.

The rest of the week wasn’t nearly as interesting. One day, I toured a big call center where they sit and listen to people who haven’t paid their bills on time bitch and moan all day. It was one of those excruciating tours where they show you, for example, the water fountain, and say, “This is our water fountain.” And so on.

I have two more weeks of this stuff. And then, hopefully, I’ll be prepared and ready to take on the job that I’ve already been doing since 2002. And if by chance I have to climb a ladder, I’m ready.