your weirdest training day.

[dolf]

i'm sure you bunch of freaks have been sent on some weirdarse courses.

today I got a behind the scenes look at the funeral director's, morgue & crematorium. there was an informative talk about embalming, a chance to watch a body burn, a look at the collection of bionic body parts that get left over, and a chat about various legal issues.

what I took home from this...

embalmers have a wicked sense of humour, and bbq peoples smell odd.

 

[Laurel]

http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/189wpb231jd3ojpg/ku-medium.jpg

 

[dolf]

http://mrwgifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Cant-Touch-This-MC-Hammer-Dance-Gif.gif

 

[PayDay]

i'm sure you bunch of freaks have been sent on some weirdarse courses.

today I got a behind the scenes look at the funeral director's, morgue & crematorium. there was an informative talk about embalming, a chance to watch a body burn, a look at the collection of bionic body parts that get left over, and a chat about various legal issues.

what I took home from this...

embalmers have a wicked sense of humour, and bbq peoples smell odd.

Nice. I once took a safety course on how to survive Poly Vinyl Chloride exposure.

6 hours on how not to breathe.

 

[dolf]

Nice. I once took a safety course on how to survive Poly Vinyl Chloride exposure.

6 hours on how not to breathe.

not bad! was there a practical test at the end?

 

[Laurel]

i'm sure you bunch of freaks have been sent on some weirdarse courses.

today I got a behind the scenes look at the funeral director's, morgue & crematorium. there was an informative talk about embalming, a chance to watch a body burn, a look at the collection of bionic body parts that get left over, and a chat about various legal issues.

what I took home from this...

embalmers have a wicked sense of humour, and bbq peoples smell odd.

That actually sounds kind of rad.

The only training-type day I've ever had was when I was in college working at a wholesale bakery. They made us get food handling licenses, so we had to sit and listen to some guy talk about room temperature chickens and disinfectants and such.

Not nearly as cool as yours! I'm jelly.

 

[Laurel]

Nice. I once took a safety course on how to survive Poly Vinyl Chloride exposure.

6 hours on how not to breathe.

Clearly you all live much more exciting lives than I.

 

[dolf]

That actually sounds kind of rad.

The only training-type day I've ever had was when I was in college working at a wholesale bakery. They made us get food handling licenses, so we had to sit and listen to some guy talk about room temperature chickens and disinfectants and such.

Not nearly as cool as yours! I'm jelly.

that sounds as exciting as most courses I go on.

this & the palliative care course are my favourites to date.
but this one was pretty fucking surreal at times.

 

[kbate]

The best was "Crash and Bang School" where we learned how to avoid being kidnapped by criminals or terrorists while traveling in various parts of the world.

Most of the course work was in awareness, and basic safety precautions, but it ended with a couple days driving an old ford around and learning how to skid steer, turn 180 degrees, dodge things and best of all how not to dodge things (the criminal or terrorist).

 

[dolf]

The best was "Crash and Bang School" where we learned how to avoid being kidnapped by criminals or terrorists while traveling in various parts of the world.

Most of the course work was in awareness, and basic safety precautions, but it ended with a couple days driving an old ford around and learning how to skid steer, turn 180 degrees, dodge things and best of all how not to dodge things (the criminal or terrorist).

I drive like that anyway.

 

[kbate]

I drive like that anyway.

But I have a certificate.

 

[dolf]

But I have a certificate.

but I have the garage bill!

 

[spacekowboy]

This one time I was training to be a narcotics officer. We were riding along and I got dosed with some angel dust then I was blackmailed into committing crimes by my superior officer including but not limited to bribery, extortion, and murder. It came to a head when later that evening I followed my superior officer back to his apartment in the projects and confronted him at gun point.






Or maybe that was Ethan Hawke...

 

[oggbashan]

I went on a training course on how to survive a helicopter crash into the sea at night.

The course started by throwing the students, fully clothed, into cold sea water and expecting us to swim fifty yards.

Then it got worse. In our dripping wet clothes we had to board the fuselage of a helicopter before it was dropped ten feet into a massive tank filled with sea water. We had wait until the rotor blades had stopped beforing releasing the doors to swim out.

They repeated that three times before we could change our clothes and have a tea break.

The next two sessions were similar but the helicopter was turned on its side as it dropped. The last session before lunch turned the helicopter upside down.

After lunch we were told that half the course participants had failed the first part and were on their way home. Most of us felt that the 'failures' had been fortunate.

The afternoon session repeated the downed helicopter scenario in increasing darkness until the last session was in complete darkness twenty feet underwater and upside down.

I passed. But after that course I wasn't very enthusiastic about flying in a helicopter over the sea.

 

[Fata Morgana]

That sounds fabulously interesting. All the training days I'm sent on are dealing with conflict and potentially violent people. Got one coming up in December for domestic violence and drugs in January. Looking forward to the drugs one.

Depends who's doing the course. If it's some stiff twat with no humour they can be soul destroying and I have walked out of a couple as they were so infantile. Oh there was one last year that an ex copper did on personal safety. He was dead funny, man-handled you and told us horror stories so I liked that one.

Jealous of yours dolf.

 

[domroger]

Tour of a sewage works .
From input to output .
I can still remember the smell ,heaps of condoms and the fact that at the end the guide drank a glass of water from the outflow .

 

[oggbashan]

Back in the early 1960s I spent nearly 18 months on continuous training courses as a management trainee.

One two-week course was at a Defence establishment in South Wales, now long closed. Most of the facility, and the training, were deep underground.

But the training officer had just returned from a series of postings in the Far East - Singapore, Hong Kong etc. - and he returned to his home area of South Wales.

His wife and family were travelling by ship and wouldn't arrive for three weeks.

He wanted to re-visit all the Welsh public houses he had known ten years earlier and would we trainees like to come too? We did.

Every evening we emerged from underground, climbed into a converted van, and he drove us to a remote public house for beer and snacks, then to another, and another. We returned to our accommodation in yet another public house, and as 'residents' could drink into the early hours.

Next day we were back underground.

This went on for two weeks including the middle weekend.

I have no idea what we were meant to learn while underground.

What we did learn was that some 1960s Welsh beers were dreadful, and some were worse than others...

I was given a certificate for satisfactory completion of whatever course I was supposed to be on.

 

[dolf]

I went on a training course on how to survive a helicopter crash into the sea at night.

The course started by throwing the students, fully clothed, into cold sea water and expecting us to swim fifty yards.

Then it got worse. In our dripping wet clothes we had to board the fuselage of a helicopter before it was dropped ten feet into a massive tank filled with sea water. We had wait until the rotor blades had stopped beforing releasing the doors to swim out.

They repeated that three times before we could change our clothes and have a tea break.

The next two sessions were similar but the helicopter was turned on its side as it dropped. The last session before lunch turned the helicopter upside down.

After lunch we were told that half the course participants had failed the first part and were on their way home. Most of us felt that the 'failures' had been fortunate.

The afternoon session repeated the downed helicopter scenario in increasing darkness until the last session was in complete darkness twenty feet underwater and upside down.

I passed. But after that course I wasn't very enthusiastic about flying in a helicopter over the sea.

that sounds like hell.

That sounds fabulously interesting. All the training days I'm sent on are dealing with conflict and potentially violent people. Got one coming up in December for domestic violence and drugs in January. Looking forward to the drugs one.

Depends who's doing the course. If it's some stiff twat with no humour they can be soul destroying and I have walked out of a couple as they were so infantile. Oh there was one last year that an ex copper did on personal safety. He was dead funny, man-handled you and told us horror stories so I liked that one.

Jealous of yours dolf.

eurgh! I hate it when you're stuck with some absolute tit.
all you can do is zone out and pray for a fire alarm.

we could do with some on domestic violence.

 

[Killswitch]

Nice dolf. What are you training to be? A medical professional of some sort I imagine.


I worked in a major hospital for five years and had access to most areas in the basement and the morgue was there. I saw plenty. There was one cadaver there completely cut in half on two separate gurneys once.

For me I guess the weirdest was the day when I was training to be a tree man we watched a video of a guy with a chainsaw kicking back on him because he used it incorrectly and it cut half his face off.

 

[oggbashan]

As a newly trained junior manager I was naive.

I did many things wrong, but my superiors were reasonably tolerant as long as I learned from my mistakes and didn't make the same mistake twice.

Once I didn't learn from the first mistake.

I was running a punch card computer system and had a problem with the card punch machine. When working hard it would get very hot. If left alone eventually the card dust would cause a flash over and catch fire. I was told by the IBM engineers that if that was likely, I should either turn the machine off for a couple of hours to allow it to cool down, or cool it some other way.

We couldn't afford the downtime to allow the machine to cool. I used CO2 extinguishers to cool it down. I used so many that the departmental fire officer was alarmed and sent me a complaining memo. I replied, snootily, saying that the cost of the CO2 extinguishers was minimal compared with the loss of computer operation.

What I hadn't appreciated was that cost of the CO2 extinguishers came out of his department's funds, not mine.

His response was to insist to my superiors that I should be sent on a firefighting course to learn how to use CO2 extinguishers correctly. My bosses agreed.

But when I turned up for the course, it was for fire-fighting at sea under Nuclear/Biological attack. That meant wearing the heavy rubber 1960s biohazard suits, being sprayed with sea water from firemen's hoses, and trying to find the source of the fire in a smoke or tear gas filled room.

I passed the course, but I was still using too many CO2 extinguishers.

His next response was another fire-fighting course:

In a submerged submarine, again wearing the biohazard suits, this time against chlorine gas from the submarine's batteries, and in a very restricted area.

I passed again.

But I had got the message. I arranged for a transfer from my department's funds to his to pay for the CO2 extinguishers.

 

[Wife of Bath]

I'm trying to think of a 'professional training exercise' that I've ever had to do. Nothing really interesting.

Learning how to drive a six-horse trailer was probably the most interesting training exercise I had to do for work, but pretty quickly it just became rote.

 

[kbate]

I'm trying to think of a 'professional training exercise' that I've ever had to do. Nothing really interesting.

Learning how to drive a six-horse trailer was probably the most interesting training exercise I had to do for work, but pretty quickly it just became rote.

A few bent gates and a stop sign or two crushed and the skills are mastered.

 

[oggbashan]

Leadership course.

I failed a Leadership course.

I was already a Senior Manager when a new Leadership course was set up to train those suitable for even higher posts.

My superiors didn't think I needed it, but since, among other responsibilities, I was the departmental training manager, they thought it might be useful for me to attend.

The course was due to start at 10am. As the course attendees arrived, we were sent into the training room.

Nothing was prepared. The tables and chairs were stacked at the sides of the room. The flip chart on the stand was leaning against the wall and was blank.

We pulled out a chair each and sat around talking generally.

At 10.05 I decided to do something. I asked everyone to sit in a half-circle, got out the flip chart, and started a discussion on what Leadership meant to each of us, recording the points on the flip chart.

At 10.15 the trainers arrived. The senior trainer asked me to come out into the corridor while the other trainers started the formal session.

He told me that they had deliberately delayed the start to show what happens without leadership. They had been recording all that had happened on videotape and had intended to play it back after the morning coffee break. Their first course had worked brilliantly - no one had done anything except sit around chatting.

But I had wrecked it. I had taken control, organised everyone, got all of them involved in a heated and fruitful discussion, after only five minutes delay.

I didn't need the Leadership course. Please, could I go away before I wrecked the rest of it...

He gave me a certificate for 'successful completion' of the one week course.

I was back in my office by 12 noon.

 

[CandiCame]

When I was studying developmental psyche we had to work at the children's center for free because... free labor for college credit is a thing. I love most of the kids because I'll work with crazy kids, I don't give a shit. So there was a little boy who had a really bad behavioral disorder and disassociative thought disorder, so he couldn't think clearly and acted out. He was probably... 4 or 5 and really at risk for developing problems in school, but we were working with his class to get him the most immersive education we could so he wouldn't have to go to the special needs class and could stay in the classroom. So the first day I saw him, I went to give him his meds, it was the first day he was staying overnight at the facility. So he looks at me, and looks at the medicine, and was like, "What's that?"

And I was like, "...why the fuck am I giving these meds, this is obviously wrong. Goddamn motherfuck I coulda killed this kid."

So I go back to the professor and I'm like, "I fucked up the medication"

So she goes back to his "box". Every kid in the place has a locked box where their meds are kept and it's... an ORDEAL to get them out, for security reasons. So she checks all my paperwork and tells me that I got them right. So SHE takes the meds out to the kid, thinking he's just fucking with me. And he tells her the same thing. He had never seen them before. He was supposed to be taking these for a year.

So... I figure his mom was taking them. Often times the type of medication that he was on is abused by parents because it's pretty much speed. I told my teacher I thought that was the case but idk if she did anything about it or not. He was still there, for the week he was supposed to be. So, he wasn't in social services or anything. At least, not asfaras I know.

 

[Wife of Bath]

A few bent gates and a stop sign or two crushed and the skills are mastered.

the best was one drive when I had students following me in a van, driving the six horse rig up a winding road that I had no business being on. We got to where we were going and they came running up like 'That was so amazing how you maneuvered around that pole!'

I'm like...pole? There was a pole?