I wondered what to write on "The Horse's Mouth" today ... but then time ran out before I had to rush down for my hotel breakfast and checkout, so I left the posting here until later and now I'm writing the text during a short lecturing break for posting at the end of the day.

I arrived at my training room, on time (i.e. half an hour before the class) and discovered that in this public building the caretaker had - thinking he was being helpful - already unlocked for me, and opened all the doors and windows to help get me off to a cool start. He's got a heart of gold, but I don't think he understands that there's people around who might love to own a laptop and might help themselves to one of ours ... I find it very hard to be rough or harsh with such agent, but clearly the request that I made yesterday - "please do not unlock until I get there" wasn't understood.

And I didn't tell you ... when I got to my training room, I also had a gentleman that I'd never seen before seated there. "Hello - are you from xxx" he asks, naming the company that I'm training. "No - I'm the tutor" I say and he introduces himself. Problem is ... this is the third day of a three day course, I'm not excpecting anyone extra, I don't have spare notes, and it would be highly disruptive. The solutions turns out to be straighforward - there's a one day "Managing Conflicts" course being run for the same company in a room just up the corridor.

It strikes me that there are elements of my job that involve managing conflicts - from ensuring that I'm provided with a minimum of security for my equipment through diverting people helpfully to the right courses. It comes in at other times too; there's a minorty of trainees who find programming very difficult and can occasionally need a little help through their frustration, and there are just a few times where people feel that we've got limitless resources. The story of the guy who came to our office thinking that he didn't need to book - that he could just pay cash on the door - is one for another day. I really doubt that our business will even get so busy that we can take allcomers without booking as you would expect of a bus service!

(written 2005-07-20 19:55:32)

 Z300 - Politics and Religion

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BBQ Season
Training course plans for 2006
What is a callback?
Feast or famine
Managing conflict and disappointment
Overloading of operators on standard objects in Python
Central London Courses - Perl, PHP, Python, Tcl, MySQL
Exceptions in Python
Bridging to the customer requirement
Getting the lighting right