Monday, March 21, 2011

Training

I attended a disaster training last weekend. It was attended by several government agency personnel all role playing their action filled parts replete with blood (fake, of course) soaked actors portraying helpless victims. All the "highly charged" action sequences were filmed, over and over and over by a professional production company for posterity, or training purposes, or just for grins...or maybe they just had a few extra tax payer dollars they needed to blow. (That sounds a little bitter, doesn't' it?) It seemed like most of the time was spent having meetings.

Administrative types love meetings. This particular group of administrators was definitely a "boys club"....need I say more? The day started with meetings called "briefings", which is just another name for meetings. Briefing sounds much more official, doesn't it??? "He Man" stuff. "He Man" types love sounding "official", don't they? I think they secretly love hearing the sound of their own voice. And being "in charge". I think they like that most of all. OMG I'm starting to sound like Andy Rooney...please God, don't let my eyebrows get like his.(I have a few gray ones but I'm afraid to pluck them out...what if they don't grow back??)

At the "briefings" everyone was informed about the "scenarios". Each person (mostly wanna be "He Men")was told where to go and what to do. I'm fairly certain this will never happen during a "real" catastrophe. First of all, it's been my experience that during the initial stages of any type of significant "event", the most time is spent trying to notify (read...find) the people (usually "He Man" types)who are supposed to be "in charge". I must admit, the advent of cellular technology has improved this task immensely. Everybody and their brother now carry cell phones somewhere on their person, lest they miss an important text asking the all important question "where r u?". (This is the main reason I don't text...the grammar and spelling are soooo horrible. Kids these days think "r u" are actually words and not just letters.)

I was actually accused of being a "Luddidite" by an administrative "He Man" type. because of my refusal to join the ranks of the cellularly advanced. I pointed out that the correct term would be "Luddite" and to this day he has refused to acknowledge his error. "He Man" types are like that. Since I'm not an administrative "He Man", I have no problem pointing out my mistakes...like "cellularly"...it's probably not a word at all. Like flustrated...it's not a word...you're either flustered or frustrated.

Back to the "training".... Most of the "He Men" and "Wanna Bee's" hung out in the food center, which I totally get. I would have been there too if I could. A local cafe catered the event and there were brownies to die for. The "He Men" got to be filmed being hero's saving the day and were all brightly shining stars for a brief moment in time. Don't know if it'll do much good when the time comes though.

The older I get, the less patient I am. Sad, but true. Even though I work diligently on trying to be more patient (okay maybe not diligently, but I am trying)..I still get impatient. I have no patience for goofy rules and plans that seem to make no sense. This day was filled with both.

In my pea brain, it's all about common sense, a commodity that most administrative types seem to be severely lacking. If you have to be told to run for high ground during a flood, you have no common sense...if you have to be told to leave a building that's on fire, you have no common sense...if there's a bomb threat and you pick up a strange looking package and shake it, you have no common sense...and unless you are severely retarded you deserve to be eliminated from the gene pool...too bad, so sad, adios amigo.

I'm pretty sure that by the time a real disaster hits, no one's going to remember anything from this "training" anyway...except the brownies...it's the stoopidist thing.

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