when i am assigned something to work on i perform to the best of my given abilities. when my employer asks me to attend training on a topic i do everything within my power to get them their moneys worth. this includes all parts of training, from listening in class to performing exercises. i figure i owe them at least that. so why am i writing this vent? i had the mispleasure of speaking with a colleague today about a course we were attending and he spoke of how bored he was and how he did not feel like doing the exercises. he felt that he was learning enough from listening so he had no need to do the exercises, oh yea, and they were too “trivial” to him.


before you say, well that is his perogative let me ask you a few questions. you are about to be operated on in a hospital. right before you go under the knife you learn that the dr that is performing the surgery has never performed one in his life, but he went to college, listened to lectures, and even watched a few. does this put you at ease? do you feel he has the skills to operate on you? ok, now say you are a local electronics store and you use your credit card to purchase a product. a week later you learn that someone stole you credit card number because the company that made the credit card machine had a security breach. it later comes out in the news that this security hole was the result of sloppy testing by the manufacturer. does this make you happy?


no, i am not being drastic, i am sharing my feelings on the topic. but lets give this person the benefit of the doubt, lets say he learned something in this course without applying these things to an exercise. so now he starts a project, gets 2 months into it only to learn that he left a few huge holes in his design because he did not take into account some of the stuff he “supposedly” learned at training. no big deal right, just fix the design and move on. so they are a month late, no biggie right. who pays for that? the company? the employee? no, the consumer pays. you pay, i pay, and every person that purchases from that company pays.


is this hitting a little closer to home now? i am not asking for a cure for cancer here. i am merely asking that people in this day in age get some backbone and when they are given an assignment give it everything they have. no half ass attempts at doing it, no falling asleep in class or at your desk, no “i am to bored” to do this right now. use all you skills to their fullest potential. you owe that to your employer and you owe that to the consumers that are purchasing your products that took a month longer to write then it should have.


but that’s just my opinion, for what its worth …