Today was utterly wasted on utterly idiotic corporate policy training. On-line. It seems it is designed by sadists to be as punishingly boring as possible. I mean that, too. The boredom is punishing. There's a whole major hospital right outside the door of my office, machines making radiation, that's where I should be. But nooooo! HR in Germany, calls me in a conference call with my boss, and asks me,
"Jim, you're 199 days behind on your on-line training. We're concerned because we're seeing a pattern, here. Why do you wait so long to get this stuff done?"
And I say, "What, are you kidding? Have you seen that stuff?"
Well, they have. They wrote most of it. I explained I work on machines that emit ionizing radiation, and they said,
"The whole world isn't only about radioisotopes, James."
And I said, "Excuse me? Yes. Yes it is ALL about the radioisotopes!"
I asked them if I could just please, skip ahead to the test, and be done with it. And they said, "But you wouldn't have any hope of passing the test without learning the course material."
And I said, "What, are you serious? It's what I always did in the past, when we could just skip right to the test. Always got perfect scores."
"You must have been cheating."
"Nope."
So they asked me a question about Data Protection. Someone in the company asks for personal data about an employee which they have no business having, do you give it to them or not? And they were astonished when I said "NO, because they have no need for it!"
So then they said, "Well, obviously, as a senior engineer, you have internalized the training to the point that it is transparent to you."
And that was the exact moment when I knew, beyond all doubt, that I was not going to win this fight.
Miserable HR bastards. I've got three more days of this shit to sit there and press "next" like a rat pressing a food-pellet bar to get through. The only thing that can save me is a catastrophic failure, like, the hospital is falling over. Or Mexican Banditos riding Velociraptors are stealing the liquid helium from the CT department.
"Jim, you're 199 days behind on your on-line training. We're concerned because we're seeing a pattern, here. Why do you wait so long to get this stuff done?"
And I say, "What, are you kidding? Have you seen that stuff?"
Well, they have. They wrote most of it. I explained I work on machines that emit ionizing radiation, and they said,
"The whole world isn't only about radioisotopes, James."
And I said, "Excuse me? Yes. Yes it is ALL about the radioisotopes!"
I asked them if I could just please, skip ahead to the test, and be done with it. And they said, "But you wouldn't have any hope of passing the test without learning the course material."
And I said, "What, are you serious? It's what I always did in the past, when we could just skip right to the test. Always got perfect scores."
"You must have been cheating."
"Nope."
So they asked me a question about Data Protection. Someone in the company asks for personal data about an employee which they have no business having, do you give it to them or not? And they were astonished when I said "NO, because they have no need for it!"
So then they said, "Well, obviously, as a senior engineer, you have internalized the training to the point that it is transparent to you."
And that was the exact moment when I knew, beyond all doubt, that I was not going to win this fight.
Miserable HR bastards. I've got three more days of this shit to sit there and press "next" like a rat pressing a food-pellet bar to get through. The only thing that can save me is a catastrophic failure, like, the hospital is falling over. Or Mexican Banditos riding Velociraptors are stealing the liquid helium from the CT department.
