Managing for four year olds

I'm on a course with work this week called 'Managing for Performance'.

It's intended to give you skills on getting the best out of your team. Fair enough so far but I found the first day very American and childish. It'd be much better titled 'Managing for four year olds.

I'm 31 now but I'm over all the 'introduce yourself to these people you've never met and will never see again and tell them a little bit about yourself that they do not give a shit about and probably won't even listen to.'

There are some interesting things we covered on day 1 but there was far too much 'hey, here's something to read, now split into groups and discuss it amongst yourselves.' It's a pretty easy gig for the 'instructor' who can sit at the back of the room while the people who are there presumably because they don't know much about the topic in hand try and some up with thew answers themselves and generally talk shite to each other.

You always get the same kind of people at these things as well. There's always the old guy who questions everything the instructor says even though he knows everything already. There's always the joker who is easily the funniest person he knows, and the older lady who's a bit scatty and has to be told everything 11 times.

There's one woman who sounds exactly like Whoopi Goldberg who turns every example round to Manager's not treating everybody fairly and the same. After the third mention of this in the first 10 minutes I realised she must have been talking from experience. But you know what, I still didn't give a shit because I don't know you Whoopi, and we will never meet again.

Did I mention that anyone who returns from a break late or whose cell phone rings has to sing in front of everybody? Seriously, we had adults, who are all Manager's within the company remember, singing I'm a little teapot (with actions), or Old MacDonald had a farm (with pig noises).

The icing on the cake was just as we were leaving when the instructor told us to make sure we took everything with us, except for our nameplates because she's going to move everyone around like musical fucking chairs so tomorrow I have to look forward to a different muppet trying to show me how great they are and how they should actually be giving the class.

And I have three days of this. At least they provided lunch.