Conflict and Aggression - well grr
Consultants. Where do these people get their ideas from? We had two thirtyish female teacher types who were billed as 'Aggression Psycholgists'. If I said money for old rope I wouldn't be far wrong.
Picture this if you can; a room containing eight hardened Traffic Wardens who have been out on the streets enforcing the law, able to cope with many tight situations and walk away unharmed(ish) and these two people who spouted so much jargon in the first half hour that I almost fell asleep with all the excitement of it. For the rest of the morning we were bombarded with statistics, powerpoint presentations and 'factoids'. WTF is a factoid? I asked. I was told with a slight sneer that a factoid 'For the uneducated amongst you' (I may not have a university degree but I resent that) is a small fact. Bollocks! A fact is something true, a factiod is slang for a trivial news item. Was I impressed? Was I buggery. I can't remember when I've been so underwhelmed.
There is a saying. If you can't dazzle them with brilliance - baffle 'em with bullshit. Oh dearie me. I mean call me an old cynic but come on. The best anti aggression training we ever had was an afternooon session at the end of our original on street training course, delivered by an ex traffic cop with real on street experience. Still, this time round the role playing was fun - even if it did get me a telling off for winding up the 'Consultants' by getting mock aggressive with my oppo big Harry. Must have scared eight kinds of shit out of the consultants because I'm not small and big Harry ain't called 'big' for nothing. Six foot four and built like the proverbial brick shithouse. We paired off, with me pretending to be an irate motorist giving Harry serious grief. I snarled at him, he growled back and before you know it we were nose to nose like A New York Baseball Umpire and Team Manager calling each other 'Cocksuckers'. If it hadn't been for our Line Manager (Who knows what a bunch of wind up merchants we are) bursting out laughing - I think the consultants would have called the coppers. Kerry knew the bit out of the Kevin Costner Movie 'Bull Durham' we were re enacting and gave us both a serious public ticking off for the consultants benefit.
It was one of the few bright spots in an otherwise dull day. We even had to get our own lunches. Had the office bods been with us we would have been bombarded with snack food. For this I came in on my day off?
Picture this if you can; a room containing eight hardened Traffic Wardens who have been out on the streets enforcing the law, able to cope with many tight situations and walk away unharmed(ish) and these two people who spouted so much jargon in the first half hour that I almost fell asleep with all the excitement of it. For the rest of the morning we were bombarded with statistics, powerpoint presentations and 'factoids'. WTF is a factoid? I asked. I was told with a slight sneer that a factoid 'For the uneducated amongst you' (I may not have a university degree but I resent that) is a small fact. Bollocks! A fact is something true, a factiod is slang for a trivial news item. Was I impressed? Was I buggery. I can't remember when I've been so underwhelmed.
There is a saying. If you can't dazzle them with brilliance - baffle 'em with bullshit. Oh dearie me. I mean call me an old cynic but come on. The best anti aggression training we ever had was an afternooon session at the end of our original on street training course, delivered by an ex traffic cop with real on street experience. Still, this time round the role playing was fun - even if it did get me a telling off for winding up the 'Consultants' by getting mock aggressive with my oppo big Harry. Must have scared eight kinds of shit out of the consultants because I'm not small and big Harry ain't called 'big' for nothing. Six foot four and built like the proverbial brick shithouse. We paired off, with me pretending to be an irate motorist giving Harry serious grief. I snarled at him, he growled back and before you know it we were nose to nose like A New York Baseball Umpire and Team Manager calling each other 'Cocksuckers'. If it hadn't been for our Line Manager (Who knows what a bunch of wind up merchants we are) bursting out laughing - I think the consultants would have called the coppers. Kerry knew the bit out of the Kevin Costner Movie 'Bull Durham' we were re enacting and gave us both a serious public ticking off for the consultants benefit.
It was one of the few bright spots in an otherwise dull day. We even had to get our own lunches. Had the office bods been with us we would have been bombarded with snack food. For this I came in on my day off?
2 Comments:
Those who can do, those who can't teach, & those who can't do either become consultants. I think this joke sums them up;
A shepherd was herding his flock in a remote pasture when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of the dust cloud towards him. The driver, a young man in a Broni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban sunglasses and YSL tie, leaned out the window and asked the shepherd, "If I tell you exactly how many sheep you have in your flock, will you give me one?" The shepherd looked at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looked at his peacefully-grazing flock and calmly answered, "Sure." The yuppie parked his car, whipped out his IBM Thinkpad and connected it to a cell phone, then he surfed to a NASA page on the Internet where he called up a GPS satellite navigation system, scanned the area, and then opened up a database and an Excel spreadsheet with complex formulas. He sent an email on his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, received a response. Finally, he prints out a 150 page report on his hi- tech, miniaturised printer then turns to the shepherd and says, "You have exactly 1,586 sheep". "That is correct, take one of the sheep," said the shepherd. He watches the young man select one of the animals and bundle it into his car. Then the shepherd says: "If I can tell you exactly what your business is, will you give me back my sheep?" "OK, why not," answered the young man. "Clearly, you are a consultant" said the shepherd. "That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?" "No guessing required," answers the shepherd. "You turned up here, although nobody called you. You want to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never asked, and you don't know crap about my business. Now give me back my dog".
Stupid consultants couldn't even get their definition of "factoid" right. It's nothing remotely like a "small fact", the suffix "oid" is from the greek meaning "in the image of", hence the real word "humanoid" (something that looks human). So her "factoid" would actually be something that looked like a fact but actually wasn't one; i.e. "this may sound like a true statistic but actually it isn's true at all."
Sounds about right.
Post a Comment
<< Home