Training News

Those of us who consider it part of our duties to train other people have many stories to tell. TCMT and I have many fine conversations about this because I am married to someone who also has to train. And so to our story for the day. I've tweaked a few details and missed some out. People in the know will know but hey, I've tried.

Some years ago TCMT was a regional manager for a large chain of shops. The organisation was taken over by a holding company who did not, in their guts, believe that being a woman and being a regional manager were compatible. Furthermore, in whatever organisational situation she found herself, being a retail regional manager who did a good job (kept profits up and staff happy) was certainly incompatible with the European Working Time Directives (soon to be RIP'd I guess). So she and I had a bit of a chat, surrendered a bit of our joint income and she took the 'sod-this-for-a-game-of-soldiers' line and resigned.

But. and there is a but, she likes playing shops, helping customers and the retail environment. If there is a finer placater of the hostile and angry in this world then they probably work at ACAS or the UN or summat.

So she went back to a part-time shop-floor job with a different employer and got back her mojo.

Recently the store manager left and there is a gap before the new one arrives. The chain she works for doesn't do 'assistant manager' so they thrive on the sort of chaos you get when no-one is in charge. They also (and this is loving husband speaking) may take just a teensy bit of a liberty with the fact that, although low paid, TCMT could run the store and turn a profit with her eyes shut. She simply doesn't want to any more.

But from time to time she accepts that there is nowhere else for the buck to go and carries it along for a bit.

I expect you're wondering about training. Well spotted.

So yesterday was a day of being accidentally in charge. I think TCMT is an inveterate trainer. That is to say she likes moving people towards the required standard of competence by observation, conversation, direction, advice, correction, review and input. (I made that up. Like it?)

This chat ensued?

TCMT: You know that thing you were going to take upstairs?

Junior: Yes.

TCMT: But you left it at the bottom of the stairs to remind you?

Junior: Yes.

TCMT: (Knowing that it had been left approximately three feet from a sensible place) Did you think about where to leave it?

Junior: Yes.

TCMT: So what is the problem with where you left it?

Junior: Maybe someone carrying a box down stairs might not see it and fall over it?

TCMT: Anything else?

Junior: Well I guess in a fire you might not see it?

TCMT: So why did you leave it there?

Junior: You know, I thought of you as I put it down.

Whilst it must be kinda tough having a co-worker who knows almost everything, someone who knew, intuitively and then actually, as they placed an object in the wrong place, that it was wrong and furthermore dangerous and that an experienced colleague would call them on it, STILL DID IT!

That deserves the rare accolade of an exclamation mark I believe my friends. At least I get to train the trainable.

Thought for the Day

Thought for the day as delivered at BBC Radio Bristol this morning following the announcement that in Durham breathalysing students is being considered, for their own safety:

How protected do you want to be? Freedom to do something daft which may cost you your life. Or a nanny state with kid gloves and cotton wool.

What steps should we take to stop young people hurting themselves after a night's drinking?

Ban alcohol.

Ban universities.

Two stupid extremes. But they help us place ourselves in the sensible middle, balancing over-reaction with turning a blind-eye.

The Bible begins with this. A universal story that goes back to human origins. A garden with only one rule. One dodgy tree. One forbidden fruit. Everything else - fine.

It is a story of there being certain limits on freedom. To save ourselves from hurting other people for sure. That is why we can no longer smoke where it might make the innocent unwell.

But also to save us from ourselves. You take too big a risk getting behind the wheel of a car if you are intoxicated. Too big a risk with the lives of others and your own life.

So why not go one step further and only allow the sober near dangerous rivers? Breathalyse the students before allowing them to walk home by the water.

That Bible story is the account of why, once one rule is broken, more rules need to be introduced. The first people, thrown out of Eden eventually need judges to settle disputes, kings to rule and page upon page of laws of which the ten commandments are but a summary and today we have more rules about vegetables than the Bible had about violence.

We only need one rule. Use your common sense. Trouble is, it is so uncommon that what it means to be sensible needs to be clarified from time to time.

Thought for the Day

One of today's topics on the Breakfast show at BBC Radio Bristol (I am beginning to feel obliged to mention BBC Radio Bristol every other sentence) was the suggestion that parents might be fined for smoking in cars containing children. So, as delivered an hour ago:




Do I have the freedom to decide what to do with my body?




Recently this programme has applauded the remarkable physical achievements of those who have persuaded their bodies to do extraordinary things. Row the Atlantic? Tick. Walk to the the South Pole. No problem. Astonishing mental and physical control.




But it has discussed the opposite. I can allow my body to get out of condition. I can over-eat or smoke. I have these freedoms too.




I smoked cigarettes for ten years, from age 14 to 24. It was the arrival of a child which persuaded me to stop. I managed it. I know it is hard. I was helped by my wife's hatred of the smell of cigarettes during pregnancy. I furtively puffed away in the garage, anticipating smoking dens by many years.




I was banned from the school sixth form centre for a month for smoking. I'm not proud.




I worked in an open-plan office where lots of people smoked. I could smoke in pubs, restaurants, the cinema and football matches. Culture has changed now. We now know more about the harm smoking can do.




But those who defend civil liberties wonder where it will all end, anticipating the day when BBC Radio Bristol Breakfast is visited by the diet-police, confiscating your flap-jacks and cakes. For your own good.




St Paul had things to say about bodies. He felt we should honour God with them. In this context he said 'Everything is permissible ... but not everything is beneficial.' He summarised that our bodies are a temple. We should treat them as such.




So I have the freedom to train my body for physical achievement, or to spoil my body and treat it mean. But not at your expense.

Stupid Questions

When I helped run a summer houseparty for teenagers we were fortunate enough, for ten years, to hire Ellesmere College in Shropshire. Amongst its many fine facilities the school boasted a nine hole, par three golf course. They asked us to make sure our members did no harm to the course (which was good but not great) and so we invented a test question which, if failed, meant that members could only play under supervision. The question was this:

Which club should you use on the greens?

This week I heard, as many of you may have done, of a woman burned badly whilst transferring petrol from one container to another in a kitchen where the cooker was on.

Whilst wishing the unfortunate lady concerned a swift recovery from her nasty injuries I was wondering this week if we ought to have a test question for anyone wishing to purchase petrol to put in anything other than a vehicle's tank. How about:

Name one thing that may cause petrol to burn?

Cry Wolf

There was once a little boy who looked after sheep. Bored one day he cried ‘wolf’. Everyone ran to see if he needed help. The little boy lay on his back and laughed.

Amazed at the attention this poor behaviour attracted he waited a few days and then cried wolf again. Once more the whole village ran up the hill to save him from this non-existent predator.

This time they were angry. ‘Don’t do that again,’ said one old man, ‘or we may ignore you when there is a real wolf.’

He did it again.

Some time later there was a real wolf. The boy cried ‘Wolf, wolf’. But everyone ignored him. The wolf went into town and ate them all, one by one.

The moral of this story is twofold.

Firstly, do not imagine that all stories which sound the same are the same. Secondly, treat all fire alarms as fires, however annoying they might be.

New for the Noughties 3

Many younger readers will find it hard to imagine a large, open-plan office in which many people smoked. That was the world of work I inhabited in the 1970s. By mid-morning you needed to use thermal imaging equipment to find your colleagues on distant desks.

In the noughties we finally got wise to that. Smoking disappeared; first from the work-place, then all public places. On return from the pub I no longer have to consign all my clothes to the washing basket.

The new, iconic scene for the noughties is of employees huddled around the exit doors of shops and offices (I won't enter a shop where the single assistant is smoking outside the front door) having a quick fag.

The beneficiaries of all this were the manufacturers of awnings and gazebos who suddenly found the term 'smoking-pavilion' would quadruple the sales of their pre-existent products. And of course that well know Irish soul singer Patty O' Heater got more gigs.

Smoking

My parish, like many others includes a very old building in which some of our congregations meet. Fourteenth century in fact. The building not the congregation.

We have been told that, despite it being built before the introduction of tobacco into this country and, despite never, in our experience, having had to tell anyone off for smoking inside it, we must soon display no smoking notices at the entrance.

There was an interesting debate on Today just now in which someone wondered if we should also display 'no murder' signs. Pehaps 'no adultery' or 'do not covet' would be the ones most people needed to remember.

I think our major cathedrals should display huge 'No smoking' signs and coronation photographs should include at least one in which the monarch stood in front of the sign, thus obscuring the middle letters S, M and O.

CRB checks

I totally approve of CRB (Criminal records Bureau) checks and have become very good at filling in the documentation accurately. Working for a local church, CYFA and Ventures I have become used to more and more forms to fill in as the years progressed.

This year, with several job applications to pursue, I have broken my annual record for form-filling. Many dioceses of the Church of England get all applicants to fill in the forms and then promise to shred the papers of the unsuccesful.

No problem. But then I thought back a few weeks. Remember this post?

I ws invited, by a friend, to help run writing skills classes for 7-9 year olds. The workshops were all run in the company of two or three teachers, but at lunchtime, as all the children sat on a sunny, grassy bank watching the entertainment, I went and spoke to them. Now I have nothing to hide. I like children and it seems to me that on a day helping children with writing it was good to get to know them, chat to them and eat my lunch with them.

As I am aware of the need to be open I made sure teachers saw me doing this.

But I didn't have to and it would have been so easy, had I been so minded, to accompany children who were separating themselves from the crowd for whatever reason (say going to the toilet). Did I have to fill out a CRB check to do this day? No. And I have been asked back.

We may be in danger of filling in the cracks and overlooking the holes.

Eggs

Have you noticed how confusing the labelling on egg packages has become? I seem to recall that as a child, sent to the shops to buy eggs, a conversation ensued which went (and I maybe only remember it roughly):

Can I have some eggs please?
How many would you like sir? (Shopkeepers called male customers 'sir' in the early 1960s however old they were)
6 please.
Here you are. That will be fourpence halfpenny.
Thank you.

I have just come back from an expedition to buy eggs. No conversation took place as the eggs were on display in a supermarket.

Decimalisation in 1971 means the prices have become easier to understand but the choice. Gad the choice. First the size. Small, medium, large or very large?

Then the creature. Hen, duck or quail? (This is Royal Leamington Spa.)

Now the confusion starts.

Barn, free range or economy? I guess economy means eggs from hens which have been stapled to the wall of a shed and fed with a spray attachment on a Black and Decker. Pass.

Barn. It's still indoors isn't it?

Eventually I purchased, and I quote from the box:

6 medium free range eggs - fresh (what other sort would I really want?) eggs laid by hens with freedom to roam outdoors during the day.

Soon my label will say:

6 medium free range eggs which used to be free to roam outdoors during the day but really, what with bird flu and that it's much fairer if we keep them indoors for their own good.

Health and Safety

I have been watching with interest the progress being made on renovating a house down the road. Behind huge metal barriers bearing the legend 'Hard hat area' and 'Protective headgear must be worn at all times' several workmen carry on in bare heads, occasionally rubbing the places where the bruises from walking into scaffolding are particularly painful.

It got me wondering why there are so many unenforceable laws in this country. Basic Darwinianism will make sure the stupid builders die youngest.

Was contemplating a rant when I found Boris's article on elf and safety and the inability of someone untrained to carry a printer 200 metres in the Palace of Westminster, which became a convincing argument for government butting out and leaving people to be stupid in freedom. Read it here.

Still don't want to breathe your cigarette smoke though.