basic life skills you don't realize you rely on until you meet someone who doesn't have them

[edenfalling]

I trained Puppydog some more on Monday -- he was working the 11am-5pm shift and I was closing, so we were able to review a bit more of the "things you do with two people still on the clock so one can go out to the back room or the basement without leaving the counter unstaffed" stuff. And. Um.

Oh, wow did I nickname him accurately.

Puppydog is a philosophy major who wants to teach philosophy once he gets his degree. He is the stereotypical absent-minded professor in embryo. Very sweet, very eager to please, but... okay, for an example, we have a quote-unquote 'cappuccino' machine, which really just takes powdered crap, mixes it with water, and spits the results out through a little nozzle under which a customer places a cup. It has three slots for holding powder containers, and thus three little nozzle assemblies. We clean the nozzle parts every day, at least insofar as they have been used and therefore dirtied -- this means that we always clean the French vanilla flavor one, and only sometimes the hot chocolate and the 'flavor of the month' nozzles.

So Boss Lady told Puppydog to switch the parts only on the French vanilla nozzle. He brought them out, I showed him how to take the dirty parts off, and then -- with two examples of the correct assembly order right beside him -- he couldn't figure out how to orient the first little plastic piece, and then tried to put the top piece onto the bottom piece without putting the middle piece on first. *headdesk*

I said something to the effect of, "This is probably easier if you were the kind of kid who liked to disassemble retractable pens and then put them back together," to which he responded, "Oh, I never did anything like that."

Yeah. No shit. He'd never have had any functional pens if he'd tried.

Also when sent down to the basement to pick up a specific bag of tobacco, first he forgot to flip the switch at the top of the stairs. Then he didn't come back up to say, "Hey, it's dark down there and I can't see -- help?" but just groped around in pitch black and brought up a completely different bag -- wrong size, wrong color, just... yeah. And then when Boss Lady showed him the light switch and sent him back down, he still couldn't see the correct bags even though they are right there on the shelves of the walk-in humidor. And even though she gave him a large coffee cup so he could make a size comparison and find the correct item, he brought up a stack of medium cups instead. *headesks harder*

I just. How can you be so bad at basic physical pattern recognition? HOW???

...

I don't hold it against him -- this is clearly just the way his brain is wired, I am pretty sure this is his first time ever doing anything that wasn't abstract thought and paperwork, and he is such a floppy puppy I would feel like I was kicking a small helpless creature if I got mad at him -- but oh my god, his training period is going to last a LONG TIME.

Comments

[branchandroot]

*hand over eyes* Oh /dear/. Well, hopefully this will do a great service to his future students by orienting him a little more in the world of actual, physical things where different sizes and shapes make a difference. A real one, not just a platonic one. *shakes head*

[edenfalling]

I trained him in closing again today, and he's getting better! He fumbles a lot less on the register and is learning to correct most of his own errors, he almost managed to divvy rolling tobacco into little Ziploc bags successfully (I just had to fix the last one, for weight reasons), and he filled the coolers, filled the cigar humidifiers, and put away the day's newspapers entirely on his own. This is progress! ...It's just a very slow process. *sigh*

I told him that on Saturday, I will close out my register at 6pm and essentially make him work "alone" from that point on -- I'll be on hand to correct mistakes and answer questions, of course, but he needs to get practice in doing stuff himself. We shall see how it goes.

[redwolf]

If this didn't directly impact on your life and the ability to hold "must not throttle co-worker" impulses in check, I'd be tempted to use him as a science experiment to see if it is possible to train someone wired that way. Obviously it could get awkward if he stumbled over your experiment progress notes.

Made it to work without getting run over. Check.
Made it to work fully clothed. Check.
Clothing worn in the manner it is intended. Fail: shirt inside out, mismatched shoes.
Opened shop door correctly. Fail: still not grasping the difference between push and pull despite clear signage.

You make your fun where you can.

As frustrating as it is, I have to agree that there are just some people you can't get mad at because it's not malicious behaviour. They mean well, but they just aren't capable of certain things. On the plus side, it is nice that he seems to have figured out his niche in life is academia.

[edenfalling]

Clean and dressed, he has down. Shaving... is a bit more iffy. Puppydog seems to be working on a permanent neck scruff -- not a neck beard, not a full scruff, just a neck scruff. It's a bit odd. I tell myself he probably just has sensitive skin or something. *sigh*

He is slowly getting better. He does learn -- it just takes many more repetitions than I am used to. I don't think jobs that require practical problem-solving or spatial orientation are ever going to be his strong point -- which amuses me, given the usual stereotypes of those being male specialties -- but he's already gotten better with the cash register and learned how to fix a couple common "whoops, that is not what I meant to ring up!" errors.

On the other hand, he still can't work the combination lock for the safe. You win some, you lose some. *deeper sigh*

[cherokee1.livejournal.com]

It is a darn good thing you are patient and kind.
c

[edenfalling]

I'm not, really, but I can fake it reasonably well. *wry*

[vehrec.livejournal.com]

You know, my dad works in a factory, and recently he had to take a trainee under his wing to.

My dad dubbed said trainee 'dummy Paul' for his complete inability to remember any task, and lack of understanding that management at this factory was not his friend.

[edenfalling]

Some people don't seem to understand that jobs require actual work. Which is why they are, you know, called work. *headdesk* Also, even if your manager is your friend outside the job, that doesn't mean you will get any slack while working. (Or at least it shouldn't mean that. Boss Lady is pretty good on that front, which I respect about her.)

[vehrec.livejournal.com]

Well, the problem with my dad's workplace is that management is actively malevolent in some of it's intentions towards the employees, seeking to drive them to quit before they can accumulate benefits and retirement funds that they must then pay out. Or, in Paul's case, telling him that they need a rush job to complete some part, and then using his 'rush' time as the new standard to determine how much everyone should be payed per part. It's a piece work system you see, so the current management do everything they can to pay people as little as possible for each piece. Or the time study group telling people to spend one second testing components instead of five, while one in twelve of their sales come back under warranty. It's almost like they're actively sabotaging their own quality, productivity and employees to hear my dad talk.