Being stuck in a 4 hour training session on how to use Outlook (!) (and posting on ILX all the while): C/D

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It's going to be a long morning.

― Jordan C, Tuesday, 25 November 2003 14:26 (twenty-two years ago)

hey, you might learn something.

― dyson (dyson), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 14:31 (twenty-two years ago)

on ilx that is

― dyson (dyson), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 14:31 (twenty-two years ago)

discarded pizza boxes are an inexpensive source of cheese

― stevem (blueski), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 14:33 (twenty-two years ago)

I feel your pain, Jordan. Library training sessions have made me cry more than once on this point.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 15:37 (twenty-two years ago)

But Ned, sunshine has made you cry.

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 15:51 (twenty-two years ago)

No, it makes me blister and then I look like a character from Near Dark. Eurgh.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 15:51 (twenty-two years ago)

Ned cried when Arwen buggered off to the spirit world, hahah!

― stevem (blueski), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 15:52 (twenty-two years ago)

Such insolence. For you see, what will really happen in accordance with Tolkien's original work is that... *waits for everyone to fall asleep and then steals their wallets*

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 15:53 (twenty-two years ago)

Sunshine has made me cry after a night of long, hard drinking.

Ooh, how to open and save e-mail attachments!

― Jordan C, Tuesday, 25 November 2003 15:54 (twenty-two years ago)

You should stop asking how, and start asking how. Enlightenment starts with you!

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 15:56 (twenty-two years ago)

Actually, I meant start asking why, but that was back before I was enlightened

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 15:56 (twenty-two years ago)

Actually, I prefer to be an optimist and ask when.

― Jordan C, Tuesday, 25 November 2003 15:58 (twenty-two years ago)

I think Pod 6 is a good name for a band. Or the Unusually Gifted Raccoons.

― Jordan C, Tuesday, 25 November 2003 16:02 (twenty-two years ago)

That latter name would curse you to open for either Cake or the Barenaked Ladies FOREVER.

― Ned Raggett (Ned), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 16:03 (twenty-two years ago)

Also, I feel sorry for people for whom the most interesting thing they can think of to look at online during break is msn.com or nfl.com.

― Jordan C, Tuesday, 25 November 2003 16:33 (twenty-two years ago)

Are there 3 website people a la 12 cd people?

― Jordan C, Tuesday, 25 November 2003 16:40 (twenty-two years ago)

Do you count ILM, ILE and ILF separately?

― Andrew Farrell (afarrell), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 16:58 (twenty-two years ago)

jordan, you can make this things like that fun you know. randomly yelling out "i don't understand" and "what does PC stand for¿" then following up with with the most difficult slightly off topic questions you can think of. repeatedly doing this can amuse you (and anger others) for hours.

― dyson (dyson), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 17:33 (twenty-two years ago)

Ask lots of questions about how the Calendar functions relate to the situation in Iraq.

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 18:03 (twenty-two years ago)

Also, ask what the "i" in "email" stands for.

― Dan Perry (Dan Perry), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 18:04 (twenty-two years ago)

I = "I deserve better than this bollocks, because.....(insert reasons here)"

― Nichole Graham (Nichole Graham), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 19:27 (twenty-two years ago)

Jordan, you still have 22 hours left after the meeting, so swig the coffee and begin counting down.

― Nichole Graham (Nichole Graham), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 19:31 (twenty-two years ago)

You are all OTM. Except that there was no coffee. :(

Also, the only person I knew in the training group was my bass player's dad.

― Jordan (Jordan), Tuesday, 25 November 2003 20:28 (twenty-two years ago)

one year passes...

I am gathering the strength to go and ask my boss if I can be excused from a half day training session on how to use Outlook on 22nd February. I have already told him I've been using it for 7 years. I've already showed him the marvels of the Calendar and how you can !!! check other people will be free before you !!! send them a meeting request. He has still booked me on the course.

On Wednesday, he made me do a course in How To Use Excel. How to autofilter!!! How to hide columns!!! I told him I learned nothing new whatsoever. How can you tell a person you are an advanced user without sounding like a pompous arse? Frankly, I no longer care.

Wish me luck!

― Madchen (Madchen), Friday, 4 February 2005 14:51 (twenty-one years ago)

Write an enormously clever macro in Excel explaining how clever you are. Then send it cleverly.

― Johnney B (Johnney B), Friday, 4 February 2005 14:57 (twenty-one years ago)

He thinks macro is a cash & carry. I have decided to go to the gym, burn off the frustration and go above his head and talk to the director on Monday.

(interested ilxors may remember the same man from this thread)

― Madchen (Madchen), Friday, 4 February 2005 15:15 (twenty-one years ago)

One of our managers has just paid a consultant Â£200 to write an Excel spreadsheet which any of the accounting staff could have knocked up in five minutes. Like the consultant probably did, in fact. I'd laugh if there wasn't quite so much tragic idiocy at work.

― caitlin (caitlin), Friday, 4 February 2005 15:26 (twenty-one years ago)

Hey, don't laugh. That kind of idocy is my bread and better!

― The Phantom of the Operating System (kate), Friday, 4 February 2005 15:26 (twenty-one years ago)

Sorry, Kate. You know how horrible it is to have to do tech-support for people that ... unaware, though.

― caitlin (caitlin), Friday, 4 February 2005 15:33 (twenty-one years ago)

I need to feed off idiocy like this. Kate, do I need bags of experience or just bits of paper saying how great I am to get a job making easy spreadsheets for £200? Or do I need both?

― Johnney B (Johnney B), Friday, 4 February 2005 15:34 (twenty-one years ago)

I've got no paper. Just bags of experience. And I score very high on standardised Excel tests.

― The Phantom of the Operating System (kate), Friday, 4 February 2005 15:36 (twenty-one years ago)

I think you just need to be able to write "I IS A CONSLUTANT" in red crayon.

(sorry again Kate. I'm being cruel)

Serious answer: the main thing you need is be able to look convincing. Some people I've met in IT consulting really have a ridiculously low level of knowledge and/or skills, but they make up for it by a) appearing *completely* confident about themselves b) appearing "businesslike", which always appeals to the clueless in management c) not being afraid to charge plenty. If you set your prices too low, the clueless management will think "oh-oh, bargain basement - they can't be very good" and avoid you.

― caitlin (caitlin), Friday, 4 February 2005 15:38 (twenty-one years ago)

This is so true. Also, a good job title helps. I started getting loads more work when I started telling people I was a DATA ANALYST rather than just a database admin.

― The Phantom of the Operating System (kate), Friday, 4 February 2005 15:40 (twenty-one years ago)

I spent 2 hours in an Outlook training session the other day. See, the folders section has changed. OMG no! And you can put COLORS on your calendar now. Luckily we have these in the contemporary fiction room in the lib, so I spend the entire time counting how many of these books I have read, which ones I want to read, and guessing what country X author is from in the "international" authors section.
And am I the only person who despises it when people use the "special" stationary in Outlook? It makes it really hard to read and I don't want to look at cornucopias when reading about problems with the bursar again.

― jocelyn (Jocelyn), Friday, 4 February 2005 15:46 (twenty-one years ago)

'Data Analyst', huh?

Bluffing, huh?

Charging over the odds so management think you're good, huh?

That's ounds easy. I can do that. Cool! Gullible middle management, come to pappa!

xpost

― Johnney B (Johnney B), Friday, 4 February 2005 15:49 (twenty-one years ago)

Haha, talk about worrying over nothing. Having done some careful consideration over the weekend, I sent a quick email this morning saying "is it OK if I don't go on this course? I've already done the training" and the response came... "No problem!"

― Madchen (Madchen), Monday, 7 February 2005 09:03 (twenty-one years ago)

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