It’s Training Day, It’s Training Day, It’s T T T T T Training Day

It’s Training Day, It’s Training Day, It’s T T T T T Training Day


So great another Training Day for the Office. A day, when, according to the Office Administrator, we can get together and learn to be a team. Despite the fact that I hardly see any of my colleagues, imprisoned as I am, in the ex photocopier room, in a sort of salaried solitary confinement.

So we all have to clear our diaries and decamp to hotel out of town where we will be trained to be a team, as if we were a bunch of performing seals or monkey’s or poodles or something! And of course the ringmaster in all of this is an Australian! Well it had to be, didn’t it? I mean who else would charge 500 quid a day to get out of their combi and stand infront of 15 or so bored individuals all looking out at the golf course wishing they were somewhere else – even work for instance. I guess, for the Ozzie, its better than serving behind the bar!

So first it’s coffee and Danish at 9:00 everybody standing around trying to make small talk, trying to find a common theme that’s not bitching about being here cos the boss is here too. And he’s jovially moving around each group, staying for just long enough with each group so that we all feel touched by his presence and joviality.

In an attempt to give us something in common, apart from bitching about the job, the last training day was Bracken Bashing. No this wasn’t torturing little bunnies last seen in the Duncton Wood novels, but a ‘fun’ day out volunteering on Dartmoor. The fact that none of us were asked if we wanted to volunteer is beside the point. What Bracken Bashing is, is going up onto the Moor, with some worthy preservation organisation, and with a big bamboo stick bashing bracken, it does what it says on the can! Apparently this is the only way to control bracken, but for the life of me I can’t see why a helicopter and a supply of selective weed killer wouldn’t do as well.

So we spend a few hours bashing bracken which is meant to engender a team spirit, whereas all it seemed to do was engender blisters of the hand. (I did notice that the preservation guys all had thick leather gloves so they didn’t get blisters – I guess they thought that in comparing the size and the severity of the blisters with each other it would be a bonding exercise for us)

So back to yesterday!

For a 500 quid fee Ozzie, got us to pick postcards out a pile that most resembled how we felt about the work we were doing. Unfortunately for me they had none of Alcatraz, or Colditz, or Eeyore. Then he made us shuffle about and get in groups to draw a shield to represent the strengths of the department, all of this peppered by pseudo-psychobabble of the most inane sort.

Then in the afternoon we did the fun stuff – building models out of office rubbish – I mean what? Duh! And then coming up with an explanation that suggested that our place of work was GREAT! And we all worked as a TEAM and in the future we were all going to be more TEAMY, discussing our work day problems with each other and sharing work across the department – yeah right!

I guess the day was successful as most of us (higher echelons precluded) were united in our scorn and disbelief (obvious only done in whispers in corners not being overheard) of the whole thing.

But what wimps are we, at the end of the day Ozzie gets a vote of thanks, boss praises all our good work, we give a round of applause, all smiley smiley. How spineless hey?

But at least it was a day out and we got lunch!