fossil

I am presently being trained to manage my career and the careers of those few who answer to me. The company for which I work is standardising its professional development systems and, to be fair, it is an even-handed process – everyone from senior management to the greenest foot soldier is forced to endure it. 

Part of the training – I won’t bore you with the entire, arduous tale – involves an online “learning system’’. It involves wading through a dozen or so “modules’’, following the written prompts to click on this icon or that. It is loaded with unavoidable pitfalls - such as icons that don’t appear on screen until after you have clicked elsewhere – that send you back to the beginning and make you pine for a family tragedy to take your mind off the tedium. It is boring, annoying and at best meaningless but, one would think, at least doable. 

I have been working long hours of late and have not had time to devote to “e-learning’’ during office hours and so decided to complete the task at home. 

I hit a snag and it broke the camel’s back. 

Below is a letter I have drafted to our human resources department. I will not send it of course, to do so would be a poor way indeed to manage my career, but I thought some here might enjoy it. 

Hi HR 

Just to let you know that I was putting in a few extra hours tonight, diligently working through my online professional development “training’’. I’d been at it on and off for an hour (between feeding, bathing and resisting the temptation to throttle my children) and feel sure that I was somewhere near the end. 

In any case I had progressed to “page 3 of 16’’ of whichever mindless module I was wading through when the “e-learning’’ site went into “scheduled maintenance’’. The site’s automatic apology “for any inconvenience’’ was hardly fitting. It was not inconvenient, it was maddening. “Sorry for screwing you over’’ or even “ha ha’’ would have seemed more appropriate. 

But I digress. 

I write simply to inform you that this was the first opportunity I have had to complete this god-awful task since you alerted me to the necessity of it 10 days ago. 

It is the last opportunity I will get to complete it prior to what I can only hope will be a more meaningful “face-to-face’’ training session on Wednesday afternoon. 

In short, I will not be completing the online component of this mandatory corporate torture. 

I am willing and available to keep my Wednesday appointment but if you feel that I will be unable to follow in-class instructions to “click on the purple bar’’ due to my aborted attempt to complete this primary-school equivalent of an online “course’’ then I will gladly reassign my Wednesday afternoon to the apparently secondary task of DOING MY JOB. 

Happy to discuss. 

Fossil