I only had to throw one conniption today

And that was because I was sick and TIRED of listening to an instructor make unwarranted assumptions about the sophistication and experience levels of a class he was teaching.  I went over the edge this morning when, for about the third time in ten minutes, he referred to some work habit that “you should all have ingrained by now,” as though we’d all been on the floor taking support calls for months.  I split a gusset.

“EXCUSE ME!!  We are not all long-term employees here.  I have been on the floor for exactly ONE week, just as many of the others in this class have been, and no, we don’t yet have ingrained all these wonderful habits you say everyone is supposed to have!  Yes, we’ve had a few hours of call labs, but as far as live work goes, you’re working with some people who are ABSOLUTELY new to The Empire and do NOT have enough experience for the things you’re talking about to be instinctive to them!”

I delivered this speech in my loud, ‘fierce’ actor’s boom, and put on an acceptable performance of “just short of furious”—which I wasn’t; I was only moderately annoyed.  However, the “just short of furious” voice, when projected so I can be heard in the cheap seats, tends to make people pay attention, which is what I was after.

Well, my statement brought the instructor up short.  Apparently it never occurred to him that The Empire might be so hard up for personnel that they’d take raw recruits, barely out of basic training, and pitch them straight into training for an advanced-level support queue.  He sheepishly called for a show of hands and was shocked to find that between a quarter and a third of the class were new-hire contractors.  After that he went rather more carefully, and quit making so damned many assumptions about what we knew and didn’t know.

And I swear, they have the most unCOMfortable conference-room chairs in the classroom it’s ever been my misfortune to meet.  I can’t make the back sit up far enough to keep my spine in place so I end up craning my neck and hunching my shoulders, and I finished the day with my upper back feeling just short of on fire.  I can’t wait to get away from the damnable things and back onto the floor, where the chairs are rather more comfortable—which is not to mention that I can stretch out on the floor if I’m on a long support call (an OS re-installation, for example) and don’t need to see anything on my screen.

In other news, T turned seventeen today.  Drop by her LJ or email her and wish her many happy returns.  She already had an obscenely chocolate cake (a Hyde Park Fudge Cake from Texas French Bread, for the Austinites and ex-Austinites) and got a couple of groovy presents, so her day wasn’t at all bad.

Thom Yorke is threatened by the amoeboid ptarmigan of a trusted friend.  Fnord.