I ... PLAYED ... WITH ... LEGOS

I'm starting to wonder what I won't see/hear about when my time with this company is through.

I've already worked directly with coffee throwing sociopaths.

I've already had to sit right near a borderline Keebler elf who can say the same thing in the same inflection many many times each day (side note on her: I was in a meeting with her today and she happened to mention during a break that she has size 3.5 shoes ... is that even possible?).

I've already been told that telling someone on the phone that their request was "not a problem" was a terrible mistake.

And yesterday, during a training session, I played with legos.

Can you just read that sentence again? I am over 30 years old, have two degrees, can have relatively intelligent conversations about a variety of subjects on a moment's notice, but yesterday, I had to sit in a room with 12 other people, and play with legos.

So here's why. As part of the fact that my company is being more integrated into the globo corp that bought us a couple years ago, we have to go through all of the training that new hires at the larger company go through, so that down the line nobody can say they haven't been trained in whatever. This particular training was part II of the very basic intro for people for whom part of their job is to take phone calls from customers, and it was meant to focus on the importance of listening and asking questions.

I feel like I'm describing an episode of Sesame Street as I'm writing this (or perhaps this show that parents everywhere should be making their kids watch, for the kids benefit of course). There were two parts to our Lego festivities. In the first, the trainer gave us a series of instructions to put the legos together, but we couldn't ask any questions. Of course, the instructions were purposely vague so it would take complete luck to actually get it right. And when everything was said and done, nobody did.

Then, and here's where the learning went into full force, we got another set of instructions, but THIS TIME (capital letters means to express my unfettered excitement), we got to ask questions!!! So, of course, asking questions gave us all this additional information which allowed us to put the stupid legos together correctly.

My life will never be the same. Not only have I been given a real world in your face experience of the importance of asking questions, but I can no longer express the amount of time that has passed since I last played with Legos in decades.

Maybe this big corporate America stuff just isn't for me and I need to head back to a law firm or a small company again (no playing Legos as part of law firm training I can promise you that). Or maybe I need to stay here just for blog material.

Eh, those are really the extremes. As I've said to friends that have asked me recently how the job is going, I want to wait for all these changes to shake out, which should be done by the end of the year. At that point, I'll re-evaluate where I'm at and if I should look to make a move. Until then, who knows what's going to happen tomorrow. If I'm lucky, Chutes and Ladders.

Listening To: Spoon

About To: take part in my first practice fantasy football draft