LOA

In HR circles that stands for Leave of Absence (We love acronyms in HR), so I wanted to give a quick explanation for my recent blog LOA. I have been unfortunately pulled away from the computer this last week due to a long week of departmental meetings. The point of these meetings seemed to be to tell us that we don't dress well enough, keep our offices too messy, are inefficient at our jobs, and that our SVP got a big bonus because of us. We also were treated to mandatory dinners and reprimanded for not being grateful enough. It was awesome!!!!

I also got to spend a lot of time with our new corporate trainer. It occurs to me that corporate trainers are all neurotic and notorious self promoters. It could just be the three or four that I've met, but it certainly seems like more than just a coincidence. There was lots of over laughing at our SVP's jokes, lots of being astonished at the work he's done (eg. "That's great", "That's terrific", "Wow"), lots of over note taking even when we had handouts that said everything, and of course lots of directing everything back to herself. This current one seems to be the worst that I have seen. So much so that she almost seems like a caricature. She is the type that in a conference call will always ask a question so that she can say her name to everyone listening. That's called "getting your name out there". On day three, her last day with us, I realized while on a conference call with the CEO that she really only has one question. "What type of training do you think will be most needed in the next year?" It might have some slight variation, but that's basically it. Now I can't wait till the next time I'm on a similar type of call with her again, because as soon as it opens up for questions I'm going to totally steal her question just to watch her scramble.