In these training classes, I have the developmental privilege of hearing the same information regurgitated under different titles, namely Financial Foundations, Introduction to Finance, E&P Accounting, Understanding Accounts, Understanding Finance, etc…As I am but human and I can’t bear to see one more simplified Profit & Loss statement about Billy Bob’s CD Stand, I gave up paying attention somewhere in between Understanding Finance and Understanding Accounts. And that’s when I started looking around the room to discover a true opportunity for development: nderstanding the type of clowns whose business cards list the same company that mine does, or in training terms: Understanding the Freakshow in My Company.

Like all of the other courses, Understanding the Freakshow turns out to be incredibly regurgitated as well. I’m quite positive that the company hires an acting troupe who participates in every training class. The 1980s business suit or company logo polo might alter in color, but the characters never seem to change. Sometimes the troupe hails from Katy, TX; other times it’s Amarillo, TX, and a few who’ve perfected their accents claim to be from made-up places, like “Trinidad” or “Argentina.” [I'm kidding here; the day-long training course I took last fall, "Communicating across Cultures," confirmed the existence of such places]. Like my company, I pride myself on my ability to develop people,  so I thought I’d make you all aware of these characters should you ever be forced to attend a training class where you “compute” how much profit Billy Bob makes if he manufactures a CD at $3 and sells it at his CD Stand for $5 (Spoiler alert: It’s $2 for each CD. I’m pretty sure…but like I said, I don’t pay attention much in training classes).

Without further adieu, the characters that attend each and every training class I’m forced to sit through:

Overeager Recent Graduate: Mr. Party

For me, this is the most identifiable character, mainly because he seeks to be identified before class even begins. Should you arrive at your training class early (God forbid), Mr. Party will be ready and waiting, searching around the room for anyone who looks under 35. The opening line usually goes something like this:

Mr. Party: Man, I hate these classes. Plus I’m so hungover this morning…I feel like shit. I hope he lets us out early today because my buddies are starting happy hour at 5.

Now, I’m not some sort of crazy alcoholic, but let’s be honest: my college GPA didn’t rank in the bottom percentiles because I abstained from alcohol. So, as one who drinks, my first reaction to Mr. Party is always and forever this: WHY THEN WOULD YOU SHOW UP EARLY TO ATTEND A WORTHLESS TRAINING CLASS??  In my experience with hangovers, they are painful and especially bad in the morning. Before pointing this out to Mr. Party, I usually remember that Mr. Party means he and his “buddies” had 3 Shiners the day before around 7 PM, making showing up early perfectly manageable.

Mr. Party rears his “hungover” head again when it’s time for introductions. His overwhelming desire to be known and identified as the funny guy in the class inevitably leads to some sort of stupid and way too long opening line that involves innuendos and singling out a person in the class he knows.

Example:

“Hey everybody,  I’m…Oh, sorry if you can’t see me back there, I’ll stand up…I’m [insert stupid name]….can everybody hear me? Oh okay, good….I’ve been at [company name] for about a year and a half. I used to work with this guy over here *points at some other young random dude at another table and laughs* but now I’m in [whatever business unit]. I like football -Hook ‘em! – and fishing, so I guess that means anything starting with “f” *laughs and points at random dude he used to work with*…so I guess that wraps it up for me.”

In short, Mr. Party, WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?? The instruction was to state your name and business unit and, if you want (which to me, sounds like the word “optional”), a fun fact about yourself. Tie up your boat shoes, get a glass of water, and refrain from speaking for the remainder of this training class, which is arguably and oddly enough the only thing more worthless than you.

 Condescending Engineer

The condescending engineer is one of my personal favorites, being a finance person who frequently interacts with the company’s engineers.  In general, yes, engineers are smart and the work they do at this company is of the utmost value to our operations and profit; however, like most stereotypes, this isn’t always the case. To be blunt, I’ve met some engineers at this company whose critical thinking abilities match up almost exactly with that of my sister at age 17, when she accidentally tried to commit suicide by warming her car up in the garage with the windows up and the garage door down. Because engineers like this exist, I always get a kick out of the Condescending Engineer who finds himself in a finance class and wants to make it known that he’s better by praising the finance discipline. The Condescending Engineer believes he is smarter and better than any of this finance bullshit.  In order to get this point across without being a complete jackass, the engineer continually praises the finance folks throughout the training class, while passing off each simple assignment.

If a financial case study is assigned during class, the Condescending Engineer usually enjoys throwing the assignment in the middle of the table and announcing, “You guys go for it. You’re the experts here. When it comes to numbers, I am completely lost. I’ll just trust what you guys say. You all know better.”

Now I see multiple problems with this announcement. First and foremost, passing your work off is rarely viewed as a compliment and passing it off to me will be received about as warmly as a kick in my finance pants. Second, an engineer just announced to me that when it comes to numbers, he is completely lost. Maybe it’s my lowly finance knowledge speaking, but I’d always felt like numbers held a primary role in engineering, seeing as the discipline finds its basis in Math and Science. This means the Condescending Engineer’s comment is not only condescending and incorrect, but not well thought through. Shocking. Lastly and most importantly, an engineer just praised me for being an expert on the case study at hand meaning one of two things: Either calculating Billy Bob’s CD Stand profit is too complicated for this guy to even give it a shot or he finds that this work is absolutely so beneath him that it’s best to give it to Finance people who spend everyday subtracting the cost of making a CD from the price of a CD. Dumbass, everyone here, finance and engineering alike, thinks the case study is oversimplified and stupid. The only difference is that I’m not throwing it at you.

 Infuriating.

Tax Lady

Look around the training class for a woman pushing 60 in either a 1980s power suit or a wool cardigan depicting playful kittens. While the two outfit choices may sound contradicting, I assure you they are not; in the private sphere, some Tax Ladies are actually referred to as “Cat Ladies.” Tax Lady has been working for the company for 30+ years and has not strayed from her primary job role, which is always something highly specific and extremely boring, i.e. tax or royalty. I imagine that Tax Lady’s presence in the class is not required; rather, she requested to take the course, as she joined the company when women weren’t admitted into colleges and she longs for an academic experience. To this point, Tax Lady is usually very attentive in class and strives to understand the material, although she tends to erroneously relate all of it back to her specialized job that no one else wants to do.

In the interest of full disclosure, I usually become friends with the Tax Lady in each of these courses. This is for one reason: Tax Lady started smoking before society knew of the harmful effects and never got around to quitting since she never got around to having a family. Tax Lady and I take frequent breaks together.

Special Project Guy

In every class, there’s some guy who’s working on some project for some business unit about some topic. What the Special Project Guy fails to realize is that the rest of the company has never heard of the project, doesn’t care, and that his special project has little to no effect on the company as a whole. Still, Special Project Guy loves to announce his special project throughout the class and finds ways to inject it into any topic. Also, his name is usually something like Pierce, Chad, or Todd. Usually.

Special Project Guy’s introduction usually goes something like this:

“Hi everybody, I’m Chad. I work in [business unit name]…well, actually *takes a dramatic pause and deep breath so that he can really explain this special project in a simplified state to the uninformed class*…I more spend my time on a project commissioned by [name drop], where we’re actually looking at ways to integrate blah blah system with blah blah process, to increase efficiency and streamline our operations…”

I’m cutting Special Project Guy off right there for the sake of this entry’s length. Special Project Guy hasn’t yet gotten to the part about the consultant’s recommendations or who else is working on the project or what he personally has discovered during the project. All you need to know about the project is that it’s worthless and that the special project task force will produce nothing except for a slidepack with MBA speak on how our operations should be running. The actions necessary to get operations to run this way will be forthcoming, after a new special project is commissioned.

During every topic in the training class, Special Project Guy will raise his hand and impart his newly found wisdom on the class: “What we’ve been finding in our project….” Or “This is especially interesting to me because in my project…” The problem is that none of these observations relate to the topic at hand and none of them are particularly groundbreaking.

If your special project is so important, I ask you, Special Project Guy, why are you sitting in a training class next to Tax Lady and Mr. Party?

All Networking Types

Please reference Cristina’s article on these unbearable people. I think she covers this aggravation in its entirety.

Good Old Boy

As his name suggests, Good Old Boy is usually old and of the male gender. Good Old Boy grew up in Texas, tries his best to not learn anything new, and would be considered good old-fashioned crazy if he ever left the South. To his credit, Good Old Boy’s old-fashioned crazy sayings are one of the few things that frequently entertain me in a training class. Here’s how the Good Old Boy chimes in:

Instructor: Performance management proves to be less time-consuming when the planning process is approached as an ongoing activity.

Good Old Boy: Do it right, do it right. Do it long, do it long.

Outside of TX, Good Old Boy’s statement would be viewed as sexual, inappropriate, and, frankly, a bit weird. In this training class, Good Old Boy is saying “Do your planning right the first time by spending as much time on the process as it deserves.” Well put, Good Old Boy.

Me: Why don’t we split this case study up into parts and then just compare at the end?

Good Old Boy: Well, let’s not go and reinvent the wagon wheel and have a bunch of horses pulling at the same cart so that nobody gets any hay and the chickens go hungry.

What the hell, Good Old Boy? Seriously, what the hell is that comment.

I’m sitting here picturing a farm scene for 5 minutes and still can’t find how that possibly relates. And where’s the Farmer, Good Old Boy? For some reason, these little sayings only include animals leading me to believe that all farms in rural Texas are completely unmanned. Confusing, Good Old Boy.

It is always important in a training class to ensure that Mr. Party and Good Old Boy are kept separate. If the reasoning is not already obvious, envision a training class where the word “moonshine” is referenced on the hour, every hour. Also, the lunch discussion will center around being drunk on hunting trips.

The Hard Thinking Rephraser

You hated her in high school. You hated her in college. You hated her during job recruitment information sessions. And now I have the pleasure of hating her all over again in my worthless training classes. Or, to rephrase, that obnoxious dumbass still causes me pain even in the real world.

You can spot a Hard Thinking Rephraser during the first section of the course; each Rephraser has the exact same expression: incredibly interested, yet frustrated in an all too obvious “I want to understand this so I’m trying my hardest” way. After you spot the expression, you have about 30 seconds before you see her very slowly and very hesitantly raise her hand. Her slow pace signals to the class the amount of effort she is physically and mentally putting into the concept at hand, you think.  Her hesitation signals a groundbreaking and controversial new theory, you think. She must have just have just discovered the cure for AIDs, you think. Not so.

Example:

Instructor: Performance management proves to be less time-consuming when the planning process is approached as an ongoing activity.

Hard Thinking Rephraser: Okay, just so I can make sure I have this straight…so what you’re saying is that, if the process-the planning process, I mean-is an ongoing activity-or is approached like that-then managing performance isn’t going to take as much time,  right? So if the process isn’t approached like that, then I guess performance management takes a lot more time?

Ew. I hate that girl.

Tax Lady’s Friend

Obviously the most awesome individual in the course, Tax Lady’s Friend tends to avoid all conversation and participation. Indeed, the only contact this individual has is with Tax Lady and even this only totals about 28 minutes/day of conversation (4 breaks x 7 minutes per break).

You will know her by her condescending expression.

I desire a disconnection from the expected. I want it to be a big part of my aesthetic operating technique and perhaps in time, let it create in me a serial of prolific and inspired movements. I think my mind to be a starkly original and uniquely creative; however very unable to express anything really well yet. I tend to jump around unsatisfied with a little of everything I try to artistically express, therefore making me not really any specific kind of artist as of now.
I was raised in south Texas as the son of a poor and hardworking farmer and a beautiful homestead mother. I have two really special sisters and a brother who didn’t make it past eight. We didn’t really have anything but each other and a lot of love and trust. My parents suffered a broken heart in the death of their first born, and in their own story, made it through a milieu of trials and difficulties hard for anyone to escape from. There are still pieces of soul, shards that remain missing in them; we were blessed to bear witness to a couple that overcame and persevered through so much, and in all restraint, learned from their mistakes and moved on. I am fascinated with growing character, especially now that I am exposed to humans that don’t.

So I welcome you to the continuation of my song: A labyrinth of a storybook in formation.

……………………………………………..friend request REJECTED.

Best one so far:

Please fire me. I clean out my desk and computer at the end of the each week, just in case I never come back.

Is it funny because it’s so spot on?