Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Stresses of Training

I would really like to name this one Word to the Wise as well, but I wont. I just have to say that I really hate training people who will be taking my position.
The story begins with me giving my two weeks notice (note that my last day of work at Union Tank is this Thursday). My boss, Gilbert, goes through SOS Staffing to hire new employees until they can bring them on fulltime. Gilbert takes the first person SOS sends over and I don't think he even interviewed her. Anyway, Tuesday she, will call her Crazy, comes in to my office and I start to ask her questions about what we do at our shop. Wow, she blew me away. I thought I was asking Gilbert what we did here. I don't think I ever heard it explained so well before. I knew right then that she was going to work out. I start to train her and get pretty far, she seems like she's understanding it. Wednesday, same thing. Thursday she starts to do everything by herself and explains what she's doing to me and why she's doing it. SHE IS TOTALL MIXED UP! I start to explain to her that she's mixing everything up and start to explain it again. Misty, the girl I originally trained before I left Union Tank the first time is in my office as well listening in. Crazy begins arguing with me and is basically telling me that I don't know what I'm doing and she knows what she's doing. I then tell Misty I'm going to walk away for a minute to calm down and asked if she would try to explain it better for her to understand. I don't think I have ever felt my blood pressure rise before now. I feel as though I am one of the thermometers in cartoons where the red is rising and going up to the bubble at the top and pulsating right before it is going to burst.
I calm down and come back and just sit in on Misty trying to explain it more. It's 5:00 and Crazy leaves. Misty and I talk and decide that she would tell Gilbert what happened since I don't work Friday's. Well, Gilbert wants to see how she does Friday so Misty gets to have her all day in her office while she works on her stuff. Not much of my work got done Friday so she got to come back in Monday.
Well, Monday I went in at 10:00 and planned to work until 3:00. It was the worst of the days...I find out that she can't even file right. How hard is it to tell the difference between a 5 and 6 digit number? My goodness. I thought I might scream. She also told me more than once that she didn't know if she were ever going to figure that part out. Anyway, I let that slide for a minute and start to do what we were doing on Thursday. Misty was back in my office listening in. Here we go again...She thinks I don't know my job and starts arguing with me AGAIN. I had had it. Misty sat down and told me to go to her office and finish what she was working on and see if she could do better to make Crazy realize what she was doing was wrong. I had not been able to do any work yet that day so I still had a whole days worth of work at 1:30. I tell this girl that since the day is almost over I'm going to do it and she can watch. 4:00 comes and Crazy leaves. Gilbert comes in and starts to talk to Misty and me. We tell him what happened and he says that if she's thinking she knows more than we do then that wont work. She's done.
Gilbert calls someone that brought her resume' in the day we started training Crazy lady. She comes in today at noon and tells us that she can only work until 2:00 and wont be in the rest of the week. Again note, my last day is Thursday. I start to train her the best I can with the little time that I have. She leaves at 1:45 so she can be to her destination by 2:00. I don't have anyone to train anymore. I just get to do my job the rest of the week and now poor Misty gets to train someone for my job and do her own at the same time. I feel so awful, but I don't know what else to do.
I guess these are the joys of training a new employee that thinks they know everything about everything. Now I guess the crazy girl knows that it doesn't cut it to think you know more than the person that is training you.

1 comment:

Nancy said...

love the story. totally can feel your frustration. I HATED training people too. Glad those days are over. :)