Trainings, and why I hate them...

I used to laugh at the LCSW's (the Licensed Clinical Social Workers) because their license required 20 hours a year of continuing education, while my license, LPC (Licensed Professional Counselor), did not. Because trainings mostly suck and I hate them. But then LPC's started having to get our 20 hours also. Bitch. Some people just love trainings. But I find them to be torture most of the time.

You can subdivide the trainings into your day-long or half-day long trainings somewhere relatively close, versus big, faraway, multi-day trainings. When you're young and your life is full of promise, either kind of training will cause you to hop up and down with joy. When you get a few years under your belt, the close trainings tend to lose their glow, but those faraway trainings continue to seem like the bomb. Then when you get old, like me, they all suck--near and far.

1. Car pooling:

One of the signs of old age, for me, is that car pooling is torture. I love my coworkers dearly, but I like my own space, and I want to have the freedom to get the hell away from everybody. When you're car pooling, this is impossible. Car pooling also causes you to be the victim of whoever is most compulsive about being there early. You will always be riding on the schedule of whoever feels like they need to be there 90 minutes early so they can get a good seat. (Or conversely, you may be the victim of whoever is so disorganized that they are running perpetually 45 minutes late, and you spend your whole ride hearing just why. And then of course you've got to find the worst possible seat, halfway down a whole row of hostile overweight people, while the trainer keeps on going, but makes brief eye contact to let you know that you're distracting them.)

Another bad thing about carpooling is that when you run out of things to talk about, there you sit. You can't hop up and get some coffee or check your email. It's even worse when you're thrown together with staff from another office or program whom you don't know very well. A simple car ride becomes like an intake. "So, what brings you to this car ride?" No, you've got to sit and stare out the window at the passing terrain, waiting to think of something to say.

And sadly, at some point somebody will bring out the all-purpose conversation generator: let's trash whichever coworker is not here whom we all hate. The whole rest of the ride will seem like it takes two minutes.

2. Food:

Worst case scenario: no food at all. I went to a major training a few years ago at the Hinckley Hilton in Washington, D.C. I took the family with me, in fact, and we had a pretty good time. However, they provided...no food at all. Not even coffee. We were directed to the Hinckley Hilton Starbucks.

The more local the training, the more local the food. I do think over the years that those who host trainings have gotten better about feeling like they need to provide snacks, so usually at a minimum, even for the most lowdown trainings, there will be a box or two of Little Debbie cakes and a jug of orange juice. Because we're all so skinny and we need to eat something to keep our strength up so we can learn.

Big trainings farther away require fancier snacks. Don't bring me to a Holiday Inn and not give me snacks commensurate with the setting. For a Holiday Inn, I would like coffee, triple-size muffins of at least three varieties, how about bagels with little packs of cream cheese and jellies, then also fruit, including watermelon, honeydew, cantaloupe, and those strawberries dipped in chocolate wax.

Likewise, don't leave piles and piles of snacks 50 feet behind me and then not give me any breaks to go back out there and get some. If you want to keep going, well then fine, I'm going to get up at some point and get me some coffee and the other kind of muffin I didn't have earlier. The healthy one with all the bran in it.

Free lunch hosted by whoever puts on the training is a nice gesture, but usually turns out to be a major pain in the ass. The worst case scenario is a box lunch, where somebody from the training committee is all frazzled and trying to sort through carts and carts of boxes divided into 12 different types, to feed 1,200 people. Worser is the buffet line, in which, no matter how hard you scramble, 750 people are in front of you, and you might as well be at the DMV.

(I find that trainings tend to take place during cold and flu season, and there is nothing better for your diet than being 250th in line for a buffet, and all you can hear up ahead is coughing, sneezing, and people snorting back their post nasal drip. (On a side note, it is also comical to watch videos made at trainings during cold and flu season, where the speaker is drowned out by steady coughing, sneezing, and snorting.))

The only thing worse than lunch on site is the trip out with your co-workers for lunch. You gather in a group to head out for lunch, and one of two things happens. First, you get with a group that just cannot decide where to eat. You might ride up and down the main drag of town and pass 60 restaurants, but nobody will express a preference. Your life force drains slowly away. Then you go through an excruciating process of elimination: "How about Mexican?" Then somebody will pipe up, "No, Mexican makes me sick." Then, "Well, how about Chinese?" Then somebody else, "No, I just had Chinese yesterday."

The other thing that happens is that there is one person in the group who is DYING to eat at one certain place, and who will make sure you all go there, come hell or high water. They will have taken two or three cronies aside ahead of time, so they will already have a head of steam, and then they will announce, hiding behind the group of toadies, "We were thinking we might like to eat at Bob Evans. What do you guys think?" I don't care about Bob Evans one way or the other, but don't gang up on me. (Plus, Bob Evans is just Cracker Barrel's poor cousin.)

3. Goofy-Ass Training

The very worst trainings are the ones in which somebody reads a Powerpoint to you, and you have a handout which consists entirely of the slides from the Powerpoint, with helpful room for notes in the margin, but what is there to note? The speaker knows they're reading a Powerpoint so they try to spice it up a little with extra insights which consist of mind-numbing repetition. (I say this fully aware that I have done this myself.)

My biggest issue is that 75% of the time is devoted to a detailed description of the problem, whatever it might be. Usually you know every bit of what they are saying. At first, this just bonds you with the trainer. You're like, Oh yeah, preach, brother-man. I heard that. Then after a while you have that sinking feeling that, indeed, this is the training. Then the last 25% is spent on what you came for, which is to hear what you should do about the problem.

But because you are in the last 30 minutes of your time, you are restless and tired, resentful of those who cut out early. And then when you finally get the information you have sat all day waiting for, it is in such sketchy form that you could pull your hair out, if your butt weren't so numb. The worst thing is when you are simply referred to other things that the presenter did not bring, like a book they recommend. They might give you the author's name and people out there in the audience are furiously scribbling down the details. At such occasions, I think, "Didn't I come to a training? Isn't this supposed to be the training? Is this person's job not to train me? Why don't they just train me instead of droning on all day long about what I already know, and then referring me to read books they didn't even bring? Why are we getting to this at 4:15 pm instead of 10 AM?"

4. The Proprietary Hucksters:

What seems like a good training turns out to be an extended sales pitch for the crap that the presenter has for sale. One sure warning sign is a big table of your presenter's crap for sale by the back door. The presenter will often be quite entertaining and know how to work a crowd. They will drop names of the famous and powerful with whom they rub elbows all day long. They will wearily talk about their horrible plane flights. During breaks weak-minded and easily hypnotized trainees are busy buying the presenter's crap and then waiting patiently to have it autographed.

5. The Carnival Midway Gauntlet of People Promoting Various Kinds of Crap:


In the past, I considered this to be a good place to get free crap. But that letter opener that seemed so exciting to grab, when there were only two of them left at the Dove's Roost Center for Misunderstood Children booth, just ends up as junk in your desk. (It does help to have something to give as a prize to modern child clients who all expect the equivalent of a Happy Meal toy at the end of a session. "A prize for little Destiny? Hmm. How about a letter opener? Pretty cool, huh?")

The crappy merch advertises some kind of ritzy rehab center that not you, nor anybody you have ever known, much less one of your clients, could ever afford. Some of the midway barkers will have a drawing for some kind of more highly prized piece of advertising crap for people who leave their business cards in a big fish bowl. Your chance of winning a Children's Wistful Retreat in the Pines backpack? 1 in 1,200. Your chance of ending up on the junk mailing list of the Children's Wistful Retreat in the Pines? 100%.

There are times I have made it my business to see how much crap I could collect without ever making eye contact with a salesman. (The worst thing here is to be teamed up with a coworker who is a sucker for getting drawn into the hopeless sales pitches from the midway hawkers.) Other times I've gotten on my high horse and felt myself to be above all that lowly crap. One time I was at a big training in Portland, OR--maybe the nicest training I've ever attended. I noticed that, at every break, somebody would come around and set pens and memo pads at each sitting place, and about half of the seats were never taken. So I thought I'd just see how many Doubletree Bic pens I could collect, and if memory serves, I got something like 23 pens. (I could have collected many more than that, but didn't want to be a jerk about it. I did have just a bit of worry that the maid in my room would alert the Doubletree authorities that one of their customers was hoarding pens.)

One time I was at a training in Roanoke with a group of coworkers, and I was tired from staying up too late watching HBO, and the training was boring, so I opted to blow off one afternoon's training and take a nap. (By the way, those kind of blow-off-a-training-to-take-a-nap naps are the best naps, aren't they? They make you feel like you're in a Lunesta commercial.) My friend Kaye brought me a complimentary glass candy jar full of Jolly Rancher hard candies that she said she had won for answering some kind of quiz question, but then later she confessed that she had actually just stolen it. When I knew the truth, I could no longer in good conscience keep that candy jar, so I gave it to Grandma.

6. The Timekeeper Person:

For every training there is always somebody who comes up, spends an inordinate amount of time thanking a whole variety of people you don't know and don't care about, then goes over all the ways that we can get in trouble and make her turn this car around and go home. So we better turn off our cell phones*, make sure we go to the bathroom before we get started, and we better dare not leave before the CEU's are handed out. (We better not even think of later on emailing the helper lady's assistant helper to say, "Hey, I walked out and forgot to pick up my CEU's. What on earth should I do?...Is it possible you could just send it to me? I hate to ask...")

*I actually do find it annoying when somebody's cell phone goes off, particularly when they've got a ring tone that is cool only to them, or when they keep digging through their stuff and can't seem to find whatever is going off. Or even worse, when somebody's cell phone goes off, and they go ahead and answer it, like, "Hello? Yeah. Yeah. I'm in a meeting..." Then they get up, still on the phone, busting their way down the line of people and out the door, talking all the way. That's pretty annoying. Almost as annoying as having somebody tell me, all school marmy, to turn my cell phone off, when I don't even have a cell phone. It still gets on my nerves.

7. The Late Question Asker:

You know how it goes. The whole thing is winding down. The "we're about done" vibe is hanging strong in the air. If you look up and down the rows of people, they are gathering their crap. Even the presenter is just looking for a way to wrap it up, but they have no choice but to offer to answer last minute questions. People have their keys out, they're sitting only with one butt cheek still on the chair.

But there is always somebody who very clearly does not want to let go of this moment, who wants one more chance to shine. Their question is not even a question. It takes the form of "Don't you think..." or "Would it be safe to say..." or "Do you find it true that..." The question usually takes 10 minutes to ask, and it's not a question. It only serves the purpose of trying to make the asker look smart, which is highly pathetic, because whoever didn't already dislike the question asker openly despises them now. The question asker will then be the subject of snide comments muttered by 1,200 people under their breath on the way to their cars.

8. The Back to Work Bunch:

These are the coworkers or sometimes middle management bosses who have no other life besides their job. The lowest of the lowly staff are headed to Target or Wal-Mart or Lowe's on their way home. A training that ends early is one of the great blessings of life on God's Green Earth. As you're leaving--let's say it's 3 pm--you don't want to make eye contact with a mid-level boss on your way to your car, because if you do, the exchange will go something like this:

MLB: Are you headed back to the office?

LS: Um, no. I was gonna.... I mean, yeah, I guess I'm going back to, um, catch up on my notes and stuff...

MLB: Okay, well, then I'll be right behind you! We should have rode together! Wasn't that a great training? I bought three of her books! You can borrow them if you want.

LS: Yeah, that was something. That was really, you know, great. Okay, yeah, I'll see you at the office.

(Lowly staff will spend all the ride home considering how much actual trouble there might be if they just don't go back to the office at all. What will their excuse be? Car trouble? Last minute frantic cell phone call from a family member who had locked their keys in their car? Yeah, that might work. I think I'll just ride by Target...)

9. Survival Hints:

• Sit up front, and try to ask at least one question (not at the end!) that will cause your presenter to pause and say, "Now that's an excellent question.."
• Try to draw a realistic sketch of your presenter in the margin of your handout.
• Make snide comments to get whoever is sitting next to you to start laughing, and when they laugh enough to draw the annoyed attention of the presenter, look the presenter in the eye, shake your head and shrug, as if to say, "I'm sorry, sir. If it was me, I'd throw this yahoo out."
• Cut out early. If this is a faraway training and there is a hotel room involved, go take a nap.
• See how many pens you can collect.
• Buy a USA Today newspaper and bring it with you, and open it up to its full size and read it during the presentation. (I could never do that, but maybe you could.)
• Be very careful about attending any trainings that will teach you a lot of skills that will help you with a certain population of difficult clients. Because if you do get special training, forever more you will then be tagged as the specialist for that population. "Ralph is our specialist in trichotillomania--give him that client. He's had special training."