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edenfallingI 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.
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.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-06-27 02:04 am (UTC)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.