Training strain
Going on a training course is a strange experience. It’s kind of like a holiday, but without the lie-ins or nice weather or interesting scenery or opportunities to get pissed.
Well, there are opportunities to get pissed. But boy, don’t you regret it the next morning when you’re attempting to assimilate the finer points of some Important Thing with a five star hangover and your eyes trying to convince you that the inside of your eyelids is far more interesting than what’s on the whiteboard.
I’m taking this current course in Milton Keynes. If training courses are strange experiences, training courses in Milton Keynes are doubly so. It already seems to be the case that every training centre is built to exactly the same specifications. The same drinks machine, and the same posters and paintings on the walls. That, added to the “samey” nature of Milton Keynes itself is giving me the unnerving sensation that I’m in a dream. One of those dreams where everything is made up of things you’ve seen somewhere before, mashed up together to generate something new but completely lacking in originality.
Jane told me the other day that I’m a “plant”. Not of the flora variety, apparently. It’s something to do with how I fit in to a group dynamic. I’m the person who wants to provide my input, then gets thoroughly bored and wants to bugger off and do something else fun. Basically, completely unsuited to sitting on my arse listening to people talk about “fascinating” features of some computing system.
I end up being hyper-aware of little things that start to bug me.
The trainer bugs me.
You know you’re in for a tough week when your trainer tells you that on day 3 you’ll get to play with the "coolest feature" of a software program: "making personalised error messages to amuse your work colleagues!"
w00t.
He also seems to have been cursed with italics. Every other word seems to require being emphasized to make it seem important. When words require extra emphasis he brings out the big guns, the "two fingers on each hand air quotes".
Is "he was using air quotes mi'lud, and not even at grammatically appropriate points", a good defence for murder, by any chance?
He also has a great repertoire of over-dramatic phrases. My favourite so far:
“And when that [avoidable disaster] happens, are you going to kick yourself? BOTH feet!”
The trainees bug me.
Nowhere is the lack of women in IT careers more starkly represented than IT training courses. In my last three courses there’s been only 2 female attendees. This current course only has one, and she seems a little... er... strange. She was personally offended, almost to the point of tears, that a question in a review section was worded badly. If it had been a cookery course I would have been hiding the knives.
The rest of the attendees are just regular IT types. I.e. boring, friendless, borderline autistic, goatee-sporting geeks. The goatees make it easier to play ‘spot the tranny’ (especially when YOU’RE the tranny.)
The toilets bug me.
They’ve been fitted with hand-driers so pathetic that they barely hasten the natural evaporation of water from the skin. I suspect if I lifted the lid I’d find a miniature mastodon blowing asthmatically through the hole. Who’d look up at me, shrug, and say ‘it’s a living!’ in a New York accent.
Perhaps that only happens in the Flintstones.
The air conditioning bugs me.
The trainer is constantly switching it off and on. When it’s off, the room quickly becomes stiflingly hot and devoid of fresh oxygen. When it’s on, the room gets kinda chilly, but, importantly not so chilly that we wouldn't get used to it if he didn’t keep fiddling with the bloody thing.
Today was day three. I made an error message:
“Error 50001: The trainer is a cock.”
It was kind of cool.
Well, there are opportunities to get pissed. But boy, don’t you regret it the next morning when you’re attempting to assimilate the finer points of some Important Thing with a five star hangover and your eyes trying to convince you that the inside of your eyelids is far more interesting than what’s on the whiteboard.
I’m taking this current course in Milton Keynes. If training courses are strange experiences, training courses in Milton Keynes are doubly so. It already seems to be the case that every training centre is built to exactly the same specifications. The same drinks machine, and the same posters and paintings on the walls. That, added to the “samey” nature of Milton Keynes itself is giving me the unnerving sensation that I’m in a dream. One of those dreams where everything is made up of things you’ve seen somewhere before, mashed up together to generate something new but completely lacking in originality.
Jane told me the other day that I’m a “plant”. Not of the flora variety, apparently. It’s something to do with how I fit in to a group dynamic. I’m the person who wants to provide my input, then gets thoroughly bored and wants to bugger off and do something else fun. Basically, completely unsuited to sitting on my arse listening to people talk about “fascinating” features of some computing system.
I end up being hyper-aware of little things that start to bug me.
The trainer bugs me.
You know you’re in for a tough week when your trainer tells you that on day 3 you’ll get to play with the "coolest feature" of a software program: "making personalised error messages to amuse your work colleagues!"
w00t.
He also seems to have been cursed with italics. Every other word seems to require being emphasized to make it seem important. When words require extra emphasis he brings out the big guns, the "two fingers on each hand air quotes".
Is "he was using air quotes mi'lud, and not even at grammatically appropriate points", a good defence for murder, by any chance?
He also has a great repertoire of over-dramatic phrases. My favourite so far:
“And when that [avoidable disaster] happens, are you going to kick yourself? BOTH feet!”
The trainees bug me.
Nowhere is the lack of women in IT careers more starkly represented than IT training courses. In my last three courses there’s been only 2 female attendees. This current course only has one, and she seems a little... er... strange. She was personally offended, almost to the point of tears, that a question in a review section was worded badly. If it had been a cookery course I would have been hiding the knives.
The rest of the attendees are just regular IT types. I.e. boring, friendless, borderline autistic, goatee-sporting geeks. The goatees make it easier to play ‘spot the tranny’ (especially when YOU’RE the tranny.)
The toilets bug me.
They’ve been fitted with hand-driers so pathetic that they barely hasten the natural evaporation of water from the skin. I suspect if I lifted the lid I’d find a miniature mastodon blowing asthmatically through the hole. Who’d look up at me, shrug, and say ‘it’s a living!’ in a New York accent.
Perhaps that only happens in the Flintstones.
The air conditioning bugs me.
The trainer is constantly switching it off and on. When it’s off, the room quickly becomes stiflingly hot and devoid of fresh oxygen. When it’s on, the room gets kinda chilly, but, importantly not so chilly that we wouldn't get used to it if he didn’t keep fiddling with the bloody thing.
Today was day three. I made an error message:
“Error 50001: The trainer is a cock.”
It was kind of cool.
For those of you who missed it, it was some long pseudo-scientific religious babble which some nutcase had decided to spread via other people's blogs.
I didn't even bother to read it.
"Ar ar, I supercharged our shop hand dryer!"
"Tim, is that your skin on the floor?"
A friend of mines a clinical psychologist, and when we first met she took great delight in pointing this out. "Aha, you work in IT! I know all about you, you're autistic! Thats why you struggle in social situations!"
My response? "You know f*k all about me! I'm a trannie and I'm struggling because I'm bored to tears!"
And yes, I'm a smug get.
(btw I've transferred to Beta Blogger & can't post comments on your blog when logged in to Blogger..?)
Just before lunch we had to role-play a confrontation we'd had, and my example of a run-in with a wildfowler was selected: I got to play the unruly gun-wielder and everyone else took it in turns to try to, er, diffuse the situation.... (I exploded, verbally, in a most spectacularly evil manner). I found the experience to be very theraputic, cathartic even. I had to take a lot of deep breaths to calm down though. One of the secretaries facing me had ran out of the room in tears (and as I later discovered, had requested couselling to deal with the experience)and I managed to bring the whole course to an awful juddering halt. Dinner arrived early, it seems.
Over the usuall abysmal sandwiches, I was asked by a few people if I was a plant - was I a surprise part of the course, there to test them?
"C'mon, you can tell me. You're an actor, aren't you?"
It must be a tranny thing
Hey Becky, why don't you create some BeVuX "girl" pages for the rest of us. Oh you already have...cool! ;)
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