Thursday, February 19, 2009

I'm Just a Girl

I do not necessarily mean to disparage a gender or come across as misogynistic, but oy do I hate being the only male in a meetings with a group of women.

In my last job, I led quarterly meetings for one of my clients. More often than not, I was the only male in group of 10-15 people. The meeting were schedule to last two hours. They always went over - sometimes by three hours. I always narrowed it down to having 14 women going of topic and being unable to reign them in. It was painful.

Yesterday, I was in training at my new job. The first two sessions were great. But it me, a male trainer and one woman. The third session was 15 folks. 14 women and me. This training should have taken 90 minutes. Actually, it should take less, but when you have a group, I get you need to buffer in that additional time.

This took three hours. First off, a third of them showed up after the start time. Almost none of them turned off their cellphones, even though large signage indicated that it was a must. And then with the questions. Always with the questions.

Mind you, if they showed up on time or actually listened - there'd be none of this. It's like they didn't have half a brain in their head.

I'm assuming you've all been in training classes and worked in some kind of training environment - right? The developers put in made-up names and situations. Almost always these names are famous folks and for some reason it makes people chuckle, though never me.

I will give you one of the highlights, but one that illustrates their inability to grasp simple concepts: they could not figure out that 'George Clooney' was not really in the purchasing department. And all the questions that followed. I couldn't help but flash on Malibu Stacy saying, "Don't ask me, I'm just a girl!" and then her giggling.

I do not find women to be stupid in general, but man they sure picked them with this group. I think the women I know - truly know - would have beat these women senseless had they been in this training session.

And they could have gotten away with calling them "stupid". I'm not sure I can. Can I?



Song by: No Doubt

1 comment:

rebecca said...

What do you mean, didn't understand George Clooney wasn't really in the department?

Did they stop for pound cake? And Bailey's? And pound cake IN the Bailey's??!!