Training, But Still Learning
Yesterday, I did my obligatory 12 hours of overtime. I know that looks like a contradiction of sorts, but let me explain that. I normally complete my 40-hour work week in four days, Monday through Thursday. While technically, I have every Friday off, I tend to work nearly every Friday because everything I do on Fridays is paid out as overtime. 12 hours on a Friday is not unusual for me. I tend to work so many hours, not so much because I am broke and need to, but because I like having the extra spending money. The gaming lifestyle I live is not a cheap one, so obviously, I need to find the means to finance such a lifestyle. Doing a minimum of 24 hours of overtime each pay period definitely helps.
Normally, I don’t interact much with people at work unless I am absolutely forced to. I try to maintain this mentality, especially on my Fridays, being that I like to stay in the office and do my overtime from the comfort of my desk. I figure that if I’m going to do overtime, I’m going to work on my terms and do my time in whatever way I see fit. I tend to write my reports on Friday, rather than go out into the world and see clients. Writing is comforting for me and I enjoy doing it, even at work.
I mention my tendency to want to be alone on my overtime Fridays, because yesterday, I was asked to conduct a training session on how to write reports and do the documentation that our job requires. Apparently, I’m good at what I do and for first time in my many years at this job, I was asked to try and teach others how I write. This meant that I would have to conduct a presentation of sorts to at least a dozen people about my style of writing and my own documentation practices. I have never been asked to do any kind of training or presentation like this, so this obviously took me out of my comfort zone. I thought I was going to be nervous, but to my surprise, I remained calm and completed the presentation with all the confidence in the world. I don’t how I was able to do so, but apparently, I did so well that I was already being asked to do this training again, when that time comes around early in 2024.
Serena wanted to be present during the little training I gave yesterday and she expressed some remorse for not being able to be there. She was in another office, attending an entirely different training class, one that was mandatory for her as part of her current training regimen. I told her that the training I gave went well and that I wasn’t in the least bit nervous doing it. A part of me thinks that she didn’t believe me, in that, she had a hard time believing that I was not nervous. I wasn’t. I really wasn’t, but I think Serena doubted that.
As she and I spoke about the training, Serena proceeded to demonstrate, at least verbally, how strongly she feels about me. She had joked about how if she were to have been present during my training, she would have sat somewhere where she could have stared at me endlessly and no one would have noticed or thought anything of it. She would have picked a seat where I would have had a hard time NOT staring back at her, to where the staring and gazing game that we play with each other would have almost been on public display. Serena might have learned something in this training, but I know that had she been present in yesterday’s class, she would have been focused on the physical me only and on nothing I was saying. When she and I are together, believe me when I say that our eyes are definitely getting a lot of work in.
Then Serena continued and said that when the next go-round happens, she AND I could run the class together. Now, Serena is still new to her position and while she is making tremendous progress in learning the job and getting acclimated to the various ins and outs that the job entails, I would not have expected her to say what she said. Now, that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t welcome it, doing this writing training with her. I just know that as of yesterday and even as I write this today, she’s not ready yet. Still, I am confident that in the weeks and months to come, she will get better at the job. Her confidence will continue to grow. Her writing will improve. I truly believe that she will be in a spot eventually where she and I will be able to conduct that training class together.
Serena tends to doubt herself often, but she will also display confidence when I least expect her to and from where I’m sitting, that comes off as very attractive. I’ve even told her that and I think that she was surprised to hear that something as small as a display of confidence makes her look that much more attractive. Indeed, Serena still has a lot to learn and apparently, I’m the one who is supposed to teach her now, so that later, she and I together can teach others.
As it stands and as I reflect on my first endeavor with training people at work, a small part of me is glad that Serena was not there. She would have distracted me in such a way that I am not confident that I would have been able to hide it or even ignore her every move and reaction. Peripheral vision being what it is, there is no doubt that I would have seen her in some way, shape, or form. Serena has one of those glances that, at least for me, is damn near impossible to ignore…and she knows it.