So I’m going to try to write something every 2 weeks or so until football season starts. Which is 81 days away…but who’s counting??? Anyhoo, please feel free to check in whenever or pass along a new post.
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So I spent the entire week in Pennsylvania for my corporate training last week for “Sales Training II”. If you read the last JTG, you know how I feel about these corporate functions at the home office. However, I’m extremely happy to report that the week went well, and the d-bag factor was at an all-time low. In fact, I would even go so far as to say that – gasp - I actually learned a lot, and had a lot of fun. (Well…it wasn’t horrible anyway. Tailgating before an Iowa Football game is “a lot of fun”.)
All kinds of rules were broken for my corporate training (referred to as STII for now on). I’ve already mentioned that I learned something that was actually useful. That just doesn’t happen. Also, Tom the instructor was not only a good guy…he’s 6’6” – a full one foot taller than the guy who taught my class at my old job.
Even more surprising was that out of 10 guys in my STII class, only one was a complete tool – and I don’t even think it was me! That is a 90% non-tool rate, and that’s amazing. I think it has a lot to do with my company’s strict and exhausting hiring techniques, of which I have firsthand knowledge. For those of you that were unlucky enough to hear from me last summer when I was unemployed and going through the process, you already know this. With phone screens, online tests, face-to-face interviews, and ride alongs, pee in this, turn your head and cough (not even joking)…it was a TEN STEP PROCESS. Additionally, I had 10 other people that I was competing against to get that far. By the end, I fully expected them to pull me into a room with a family member, and give me a gun and ask me if I was willing to do what I had to do for the job, a la the CIA.
Anyhoo, the country and the globe were well represented at STII: Minnesota, Michigan, Oklahoma, Virginia, Georgia, Colorado, Tennessee, Alabama, the Ukraine, and the Caribbean. Also, ‘Sales Training I’ was just finishing up, and most of those guys were from Australia. More on those cats later.
- The one tool was Mark from Tennessee. As usual, it wasn’t that Mark was an a-hole or a dumbass; he was certainly neither. He was, however, annoying as all hell and kinda made me wanna whack myself in my head with Victaulic dielectric transition coupling. (Haha – I even know what that does.) Anyway, Mark used to work for a pump equipment manufacturer…a point that he somehow managed to work into EVERY SINGLE STORY that he told…and he told a lot. If you started a sentence by talking about the post-war mistakes that Europe and the USA made with Stalin after the end of WWII, he could turn that into a story about pumps within one minute.
We were all annoyed by him pretty quickly, and came up with a gaggle of nicknames: ”The Pumpman”, “Pumpy”, “Peter” (as in ‘Peter Pumper’ – that was mine), and my favorite: “Pump Master Flex”.
- The guy from the Caribbean was a helluva nice guy – his name was Fernando. He is also very used to the type of environment that one affords while living and working in the Caribbean. On the first day of class – which was in the conference room of the hotel that we were staying at – he showed up one full hour late. When Tom asked Fernando why he was late, he replied with a smile – which I might add never left his face all week long: “I was still sleeping.” Funny how giving the complete and honest truth many times provides no backlash whatsoever.
Kevin my co-worker in Detroit (we have the same boss) couldn’t remember his name all week and kept calling him Francisco. I thought that was high comedy and laughed every time he made that mistake. I, of course, could remember his name because of the ABBA song, which was going through my head all week long.
- The guy from the Ukraine was Nicholas. Nicholas was a really nice guy, hardly made a sound, and you could tell he was very intelligent. Much of the conversation throughout the week was selling in the current economic climate. Kevin was talking about how rough it is in Detroit right now saying: “We’re up to almost 15% unemployment in Michigan right now.” Nicholas’ response was classic: “MMMmmmphh…zee unemploymunt in Ukraine ees 48 purcent.”
Bam. It’s probably not right to laugh at that. I did. Out loud.
I guess life is all about what’s relative or not, eh?
- Studies should be done on my brain and how horrible I am comprehending math. It’s seriously ridiculous…my skill with mathematics is comparable to how well ‘Octomom’ does managing her birth control. I’m ok with this, as any math done on this job is nothing more than multiplication which I can do with my $9 Boston Scientific calculator. However, they had us work on the freaking expansion and contraction of steel distribution pipe, and how that affects our various products. If I’m lucky enough to work for this company for another 10 years, believe me when I say that I won’t have to calculate this shit. Like…ever. I swear.
But there we all were…Tuesday morning at 9am trying to work through algebra exercises with one of our internal engineers. And that guy looked like he swallowed a Goodyear tire whole. He was not fat, he was…shapes. (You know the kind.) I doubt he could screw and chew gum at the same time. I got through the first 2 exercises by faking my way through it. (I had a lot of practice, as this was how I got myself through 4 years of high school algebra.) Then he scanned the room for the last question. I immediately put on my mental invisibility cloak…but of course he still picked me. I went up to the board in front of the class and our two instructors like Ryan Leaf trying to dissect a Bill Belichick defense. There was no freaking chance. I just wrote up the numbers that they gave us, then picked a number between 1 and infinite (I went with 86) and then drew a frown.
When the engineer asked me how I couldn’t get it, I just said: “I’m horrible at math. It doesn’t work in my brain. I just doesn’t.” He looked at me like I had just grown a 3rd eyeball in the middle of my forehead. So I said to him: “Yup…you’re giving me the EXACT same look that all my math teachers gave me grades 5th through 12th. You won’t have success with me, especially during some 3 hour training session.” He just shook his head and had a classic response, especially considering he’s an enginerd and all: “Welp…it’s a good thing you’re pretty.”
The whole class laughed, including me.
- During this same math session, Andy Anderson (real name) was the guy from Alabama. He sounded like Forrest Gump on sleeping pills. But he was hilarious. Anyhoo, the very first math exercise they gave us (without giving us the charts and what-not to use), Andy actually solved the problem on his own. The engineer was amazed. When he asked Andy how he got the answer, I thought Andy’s response was great: “Uhhhh….cuz I’m a fuggin’ genius.”
(That last sentence is a LOT funnier when you do it with a Forrest Gump accent. Just try it.)
- As I mentioned earlier, the STI class was mostly foreign and 4 of the 8 were from Australia. We were only able to hang out with them the first 2 nights, but they were great. The one guy I really liked was from Melbourne – his name was Dave. But he didn’t pronounce his name like we say Dave, and instead pronounced his own name so it sounded like ‘Dive’. And mine was not pronounced Jeff, but instead pronounced ‘Jeef’. He was telling me all about some beer drinking festival they have every summer in Melbourne. It sounded AWESOME…especially since Ireland and Australia are at the top of my list of places that I want to visit. Then he said: “Ahh yea, come on down Jeef. You don’t have ta stay that loong, maybe jeest a month or so.” Awesome.
Then ‘Dive’ asked me where I was from, and I said: “Iowa. The greatest place in the states.” And he asked me what’s there to do in Iowa, and I said: “Farm, drink, and fuck.” And ‘Dive’ loved it: “Thot’s GREET! I’ll havta make it ter Iowa then, eh?”
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From the “That Can’t Be ANY Cooler” category…my dad got a Harley! I don’t know what else to say except that my dad is a PIMP!
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Have a great week!
GO HAWKS!
-Jeffrey the Greek!
PS: “There was something in the air that niiiiight…The stars were bright, Fernandooooooo! They were shining there for yoooou and me…For liberty, Fernandoooooo!”
Posted by Jeff Buch 
