The quick n’ dirty:

I cried, on the way home
Ingrid didn’t need formula
Training is lame
I got in trouble

OMG, corporate training just sucks, if you’re the trainee. And, as Jeanne said "have half a brain." I arrived, got my badge and key thing, and took a seat in the trianing room. Oh, we watched corporate videos, the history of the company, the ‘core values’ or ‘guiding principles’ or some thing like that, and we learned how to — I swear to god — create a password. Oh, and how to use CTRL-ALT-DEL, too. Erm, yeah.

We learned the basics of the ordering system, and seriously, show me how to use the phone and I’ll go do this job right now. But, no, we have 3.5 more days of training to make sure the lowest common denominator (who, incidentally, is my partner) gets it, too. Can’t I CLEP out of this?

One of our things was to go over how to enter an address, and then we had to do this online quiz of five questions, and (of course) I raced through it, 100% whatever, so I started poking around the intranet (where these quizzes live) and a trainer rushes up and is all "OH NO! You’re lost, you’re at MONOGRAMMING!" and I said "No, I’m not lost, I just finished the quiz and thought I’d look around" and she said "No, you need to be at the quiz." Whatever. So I stared at the last page of the quiz for ten minutes, while people debated how to abbreviate Suite. OMG, LAME.

And, of course, OF COURSE, I ended up having to show the trainers how to override the auto address thing. The question (which was totally valid) was about when towns share a zip code. Around here, one zipcode is shared by four towns, mine included, and several of the same roads run through those towns, so there is lots of potential for fucking up. ANyway, the system puts in the town when you enter the zip, and the trainers both didn’t understand the issue, and didn’t know how to change it, so I explained both. What a know-it-all.

My LCD partner was like "wow, you’re good at this!" when we were doing practice stuff, and she was so totally not, but I pulled out my teacher cap and helped her along. The trainers didn’t have me do fake orders, just help her by being the fake order customer. It wasn’t that bad, if anything, it really had me TEACHING again, and I realized what a good educator I can be, and I had all of the mixed emotions that that realization always brings me.  She was doing  okay by the end, but yeah. That was my training experience.

Oh, and pumping! The whole NYT article about pumping for people who aren’t professionals was on my mind all night. I can pump, and that’s great — they have a "first aid room" with a screen, and a cot/exam table thing, and an outlet for when my new parts get here, so that’s good. But, I didn’t get to eat DINNER because I’d foolishly brought a Lean Cuisine, and the microwaves were at one end of the building, and i was at the other. And the first aid room is right off of the call floor, with frosted glass windows, but still, I kind of felt on display a bit, trudging over there to mysteriously hang out for half an hour. My ‘coach,’ (LAME) was all "Oh, when you need to use this, tell the floor person, and they’ll be dicsreet, not "GUESS WHAT GRETCHEN’s DOING IN THERE!" hehehe…" Which totally tells me that she’s not dealt with the situation much, eh? Like, oh, thanks, I hadn’t worried about all y’all talking about my GIANT LACTATING BREASTS on the call floor. In that half hour, too, I only got 2 oz, which I was devastated by. When I got home, I got 2 more, and Ingrid had only taken 6 of the 8oz here, so I think we’ll make it another night. I hope that when the bigger horns come, it is more comfortable, too.

And, at the end of the night, I got in my car and cried the whole way home, and for a while after.  I mean, I still think this is a great opportunity for us (as a family) to bring in a little money, to give Dave some real independence with Ingrid, to stock up with the company discount while we can… just this TRAINING period blows in a million different ways. I went to sleep last night reminding myself that it’s only three more long nights (apparently, the last night of training is a half-day.Half-night, whatever, only 4 hours and Ill be home at 8:30.) and then I’m good to go. Because I am NOT the LCD, I figure I have a good chance of moving up in some way, and this is only temporary, anyway.

So, yeah, that was my night. Crying, invisible eye-rolling, and checking out the forbidden monogramming area. Sweet.