Wednesday, January 14, 2015

In which my ADD takes over

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I'm downtown in a training class this week. The course -- Influence Skills: Getting Results without Direct Authority -- is considered a soft skill but definitely one I can use, especially at my current gig. 

The usual format of IT training courses factor in a lot of fluff time.  A typical First Day goes like this:

Morning:  Introductions, Instructor background, break, chapter 1-2, lunch, review, Chapter 3, break, Chapter 4, class dismissed often earlier than anticipated.  

The next day starts with a review of the previous day, break, new stuff, lunch, repeat.

These soft skills course don't have as much, so I cannot do all my reading and email checking and social media connecting.  But my ADD is still beckoning me to do something with my idle time.

The instructor is in Canada as are the other six students.  One of those six is taking the course from his house because he lives in some remote part of Canada.  [Everyone shouted out cities and provinces but they went too quickly for me to catch them.]


The class was actually scheduled for the second week of December but my former boss made me reschedule it because one of my applications was being upgraded the following weekend and even though there was nothing for me to do that week, he felt it was necessary for me to be in the office.  Spoiler Alert:  No one asked me anything and there was nothing for me to do. 

This is illustrative of just how clueless the guy was about what it is I do.  I think it was really more that he realized I would be gone the entire month of December because I was also going to use my last week of paternity leave in conjunction with the holidays and extra Appreciation Days the company gave us so that we wouldn't have to raid our PTO time to fill in the days between weekends and Christmas or NYE.

Of course then he gave his notice two days later and I'm like WTF!  If you were going to quit anyway, why do you care if I'm in the office or not?  In some ways it worked out because there isn't much to do at the office right now and not driving out to OBT in this weather is a good thing. 

And I'm not trying to knock my old boss.  He's a relatively good guy as far as middle managers go.  In Corporate America the Perfect Boss is a unicorn and if you have one that isn't a micro-manager, doesn't have any apparent dysfunctions or limitations and generally leaves you alone, you have a good thing.

2 comments:

  1. Ohhhh, corporate America. I have a good thing...a little bit of a micromanager when he's nervous or antsy, but not horrible. Then again, he is the CEO so I guess he can be as micromanaging as he wants to be. But generally he leaves me alone to do my thing and I'm thankful for that.

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    Replies
    1. everyone has their good and bad points, myself included. I think it's just a matter of finding a boss with more good than bad and learning to deal with the quirks.

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