Thank goodness for cool supervisors...

When I was still a teenage slave working a fast food drive- through, I used to dream about the day when I had a job with a real office, an executive desk, an 8-5 workday, informative training days and very important meetings. Of all these, I have managed to realize only the dream of the office, and mine I'm quite sure was actually meant to be a broom closet.

There is no 8-5 workday, my desk isn't even real wood, and I can't remember the last time I had a truly informative training day or really important meeting. I do learn things sometimes and I do think that the work I do is very important,  but most of the time meetings are formalities with all of the major work being done prior to or after the fact and trainings are a long, boring rehash of something someone has told you a hundred times already.

Since I am new to the particular agency I currently work for, I have literally been in training for months.  Although I actually appreciate that fact and did not prefer to be thrown to the wolves upon hire, I have done similar work for years and most of the training is about things that I could teach to the instructors in my sleep. Not that I haven't learned anything at all.  For example, today I learned that the ceiling in the training room has 246 tiles and that the two air conditioning vents have been severely neglected by the cleaning service.

I was joined in training today by several other social workers from my office, since it was a training on 'Brand New Material'.  Apparently in our agency, brand new means that they changed one sentence of a 2000 page policy and we must all be re-trained on the whole thing. Since they had been trained on the material (except for the one sentence of course) many more times than I had, they were even more bored than me.  This caused among them a phenomenon known as boredom texting.

Boredom texting as it pertains to redundant trainings consists of texting your colleagues within the same room secretly with humorous anecdotes, being careful not to be caught for fear of offending the usually well-meaning trainers.  I have no objections to boredom texting as long as the training is truly ridiculous, the trainers never get upset or offended, and the texters and textees maintain their composure and do not disrupt the rest of the trainees who are perhaps new to the planet and have a need to actually listen to the material.

Unfortunately, my co-workers and I eventually received a text that was so funny we were all forced to lose our composure and laugh loudly or else urinate on ourselves trying to hold it in.  We chose to laugh loudly, which then resulted in a domino effect of breaking all the bordom texting rules mentioned previously.  Our loud laughter caused us to lose our composure, disrupt the rest of the trainees and was obviously noted by more than one of the trainers, who were likely disgruntled by our outbursts. Thank goodness for us, the offending texter turned out to be our supervisor, who apparently has an amazing sense of comedy.  She was also one of the trainers, and  being careful to save the feelings of her comrade trainers she appeared to chastise us appropriately for our immature behavior.

Now, I can't tell you what was so funny, but I can tell you that I have a whole new respect for my supervisor and her ability to sympathize with our pain and relieve it adequately to the best of her ability during our very boring day.

I can tell you about the last boredom text I received at my previous job from the psychologist sitting across from me at an administrative meeting.  He wanted to inform me that the clerk sitting next to him was sexting with the attorney sitting next to me.  Now those two were just out of line.