Well, doesn't that just take the berries!

You know that feeling you get when you are about to do something that you know you should be avoiding? I'm not talking about sitting outside of a convenience store just before you are about to put a gun in the clerk’s face, I’m talking about normal, everyday things that you know you are going to hate. Like a black hole, it sucks you in past the point of no return and you are forced to sit there and take it.

That happened to me. Today.

Scenario: Company installs new copy machines. I, being the department (pseudo) admin, am invited to a “copier training session.”

(Yes pseudo-admin. I perform some tasks that would qualify me as an administrative assistant, but department contact I am not. Unfortunately, with the title, comes the job.)

I do not need copier training. I know how to copy a piece of paper. I can make it staple, print double-sided and all that fancy stuff. The first email and voicemail message about the training goes unanswered. Hey, she’s not in my department, so what do I care. Finally, I get another email message saying how important it is for me to attend. The black hole has me.

First of all, I arrive to the training on time. The trainer however, did not. I was sent back to my cubical to wait for a call to tell me when she arrives.

The call comes and I walk over to where the training is to be held, at the copier. A one hour training session standing at a copy machine… need I say more? Yes? Ok, I will.

As I approach the copy machine, I see about 8 women, all at least twice my age. One clearly has a temporary badge pinned to her shirt, so I can identify immediately who the trainer is. As I draw nearer, the trainer says to me, ‘Oh, looks like you’re the one making us wait, huh?’ Huh? No, I can’t even dignify that with a response.

If you’ve ever been around many older women that work together, you could imagine the scene. Multitudes of questions on the simplest of tasks. Asking things that are clearly beyond the scope of a copier. Example: ‘Can you make a copy of a check, front and back, and have it print on the same sheet of paper in just one step?’ I seriously don’t know why you would want to be able to do that, but clearly it cannot be done. (After the trainer said no, I heard somebody say ‘Oh, I was hoping that this new copier would be able to do that.’ Duh.)

There is a good possibility that the trainer missed her train the trainer sessions. She was bad. Mumbling, forgetting to reset the copier after reducing an image and breaking the machine. That’s right, she broke our new copier.

She opened up the front panel to show us how to clear a paper jam. She removed a couple of the inside parts. She showed us how, if you don’t put it all together just right, the door will not close. She could not get the door closed. 15 times she adjusted and played with knobs and switches to try to get the door to close, but it wouldn’t. ‘Well, doesn’t that take the berries.’ She proclaimed.

They finally called up somebody else to help her. ‘One of the plastic latches for one of the inner parts is broken,’ he declared. Brilliant.

At least I looked busy for an hour. The training was a joke; I learned nothing.

The other guy that came down to fix the machine after she broke it said to me as I was leaving, ‘Did you get all that?’ Yeah mister, I got it. Next time, I need to be more careful of the black holes.