Okay, if She works out around Here, I'll be a bit surprised.

Not that She'd agree. No, after a whopping 7 hours of training, spread over two days, She feels She's got a good handle on everything.

She must feel that way, otherwise why would She have made or taken five personal calls today, most of them while I was in the middle of a sentence trying to teach her about something?

Otherwise, why, when I was trying to tell Her something that I assured Her was going to be personally important to Her, did She decide that making a call to a friend to see if She'd accepted a new position, was more important? If you don't send Bernie your timesheet every other Wednesday, you will not get paid every other Friday. She felt that not only Her phone call, but a discussion about how small the calendar was displaying on the monitor were more important than understanding how the payroll & timesheet process work. Her (paycheck) loss.

Maybe it's just me? I know my work style doesn't match everyone's. Many people enjoy spending a significant percentage of their work days exchanging personal anecdotes and family stories. I've never been one of those people.

Also, I was assuming that with a maximum of 20 hours for training ahead of us, we'd both prefer to focus on the training and not bother to play Getting To Know You since we won't be meeting again after this week, but She shows a marked tendency to drift toward personal chit-chat in preference to doing actual work. At the drop of a hint, She's wandering off into stories about Her spouse's shoulder surgery or Her horses or Her part-time job or anything but what She's ostensibly being paid to think about, which is learning this job.

Without in any way meaning to disparage the pets/children/spouses of those of you who possess those accoutrements, I must say that my interest in the p/c/s of near-strangers is non-existent. I am not making this 80-mile round-trip journey every day to listen to Her chat about Her hobbies or hubby.

Today did contain one little giggle, though.

When Bernie called to discuss a couple of database issues, She took Her lunch and went to the other room. Later She explained that She didn't need to be in on those discussions. Bernie has assured Her that She doesn't need to worry about the databases since they won't be an issue after this week. I disabused Her of that notion promptly.

She--did not look pleased.

I--do not care. You can't just take the parts of a job you think will be easy or uncomplicated. Also, what kind of fool thinks they don't have to be involved in something important enough to have been allocated three training sessions in three days?

At that point, I made a point of mentioning to her that Bernie had complained about a bad phone connection and that he was going to call me back. It's anybody's guess as to why she felt that was the appropriate moment for her to tie up the phone setting up an address book, choosing a new ring, and exploring the other features. If he did try to call me back, I probably won't know about it until tomorrow.

Sigh. After I arrived this morning, it took me forever to stop Her chatting with Bernie and filling out insurance paperwork and fussing over how the fax was set and wondering why the printer made so much noise when printing and a dozen other minor nothings she kept bringing up.

I know She has to be tired of "being trained." She's not half as tired of it as I am of listening to myself repeat all of this stuff to Her, but I'd hoped She was smart enough to stay with it, understanding that no employer pays someone to spend a week training you if they don't think you're going to need trained.

In the end (thanks in no small part to Bernie feeling needy today) I'd be surprised to learn that we spent as much as an hour training.

The one thing I most wanted to do, an introduction call with Her to our largest client, got lost in the shuffle, which is going to offend the client who was waiting for our call and cause Her problems when she starts working with them later.

Okay, honestly, I think it got lost in the rising tide of my indignation. About the third time I was in the middle of explaining something and I looked up to see her dialing a call or walking out of the room with her phone pressed to her ear.... Well, I'll admit, I spent a fair amount of the day wondering whyinthehell I had bothered to show up today.

Two more days.... Two more days....