ROI report

Tuesday at work was one of those days—the kind that leave you wishing for nothing so much as a flattop of nachos steaming through an ocean of margaritas. This was largely because of that class I was telling you about, trying to teach people how to think in terms of ideas for new products and services.

Now I understand that this is a bit of a stretch for most of the staff in this organization, and maybe even a few exits past their comfort zone. That’s why we paid many monies to a consultant to come in and teach the six-session course. Early this month we started out with 17 people signed up. (We’d hoped to get somewhere between 20 and 30.) Everyone expressed great excitement when they asked to join. Two told me they couldn’t make it to the first class, but I gave them dispensation—they could catch up via online videos and discussions.

So, aside from those two, one person emailed me the day before that first session to proclaim that she’d thought it would be on Wednesday, and she had other plans for Tuesday. Ooookay. One other person just didn’t show, and only informed me two days later that she’d be unable to take the course. And eventually she was followed by Ms. Day-Confusing Person—unexpectedly high work load.

Well. Tuesday was the second meeting. Tuesday morning I received three emails (including one about 30 minutes before class time) moaning about (unexpectedly) heavy workloads that prevent them from continuing with the class. Moreover, I’ve still not heard from the two planned no-shows, but as they’ve now missed two of the six sessions, I’m declaring them forfeit, and their copybooks are well and truly blotted in my mind. (You want to try to come to a later iteration of this, cupcake? Yeah, right.)

Look—this course is more than a few bob out of my annual budget, and the purpose is to develop these people’s ability to essentially be more creative. This is a big benefit to them, even though of course we’re hoping that this also results in ideas that we can build out. This is something that many, many other companies’ employees would jump at; this crowd treats it like a back-up prom date they can ditch when a better prospect comes along.

(As long as I’m on the subject: the first cohort of this course wasn’t unalloyed joy, either. Out of our 20 original participants, a couple dropped out after two classes, three more at about week five, and five more refused to pitch an idea, which was the whole point of the exercise.)

So I’m thinking you can understand why my disgustedness cup raneth over on the Metro ride home on Tuesday. I don’t have either nacho materials or tequila at home, so I had to make do with the last inch of a pedestrian Pinot Noir in the fridge to accompany my supper.

My manager and I have our weekly catch-up meeting on Wednesday mornings. He is not attending this round of the course, so part of my reports is an update on how it’s going. I walked into his office yesterday at 0800. He finished the email he was composing, then turned to me and announced, “I hate people.” I never got the specifics on this, because sometimes it’s just best not to know.

Once he’d got that out of his system, he came over to the little conference table and asked, “How did it go yesterday?” giving me the perfect opening.

“I hate people.”

Well, he wasn’t best pleased with the seven slackers. I think he’s going to cool down a bit before emailing them. But I doubt that any of them will be invited to participate in any future classes. Which is fine by me—I’m really, really tired of whining.

But perhaps I should stock up on tortilla chips, cheese, jalapeños and tequila. I still have four more sessions to get through.