Funny Training Stories

I’m now a job search trainer and coach but I started my career as a corporate trainer (now called Learning and Development Analyst). Over the years I designed and presented hundreds of programs in a variety of topics including management development, consulting, work/life balance, new hire orientation (now called on-boarding), interviewing for managers, competency development, performance appraisal and even Sarbanes Oxley. Training was and still is the favorite part of any of my work.

Throughout my career I have experienced the good and the bad and the funny.

A while ago I asked some of my LinkedIn training group members for funny instructor stories. I got quite a few and none of them were the “you had to be there” type. Here they are, along with some of my own.

The Wind Beneath My Wings

I was late wrapping up a management development class and missed my flight home. After calling the office, they suggested I take a helicopter back to the airport, something I had never done before. While standing on the tarmac listening to the pilot explain where I was to sit, the propeller draft caused the skirt of my dress to fly over my head and I honestly couldn’t get it back down. I don’t know how I got into the helicopter but the hem of the dress was around my neck as I was seated and I had to listen to the snickers of the three other (male) passengers for the trip back to NJ.

There Is No ASCII

"I was supervising a group of administrators who were producing a manual in differential equations using WordPerfect. One of them was searching for a specific symbol in the WP symbol menus using CTRL + W, and couldn't find it. "Did you try the ASCII for that character?" I asked.

"There's no ASCII on my keyboard," she replied. She thought I said "ass key"! I still chuckle at the mental picture of a key with a little butt on it!"

I Don’t Have Enough Fingers for That

"When training Word, I explain that the quick way to get to the very top of your document is CTRL+Home and the quick way to get to the very bottom of your document is CTRL+END. After having several people press CTRL+N (because of the way I say it), I decided I would start spelling out the word “end.” During one class, I said, “Press CTRL and the END keys, that would be the CTRL key plus the E – N – D key.” Well, one participant thought I meant that he should press the CTRL, the E, the N, and the D keys – all four at the same time."

You’re Supposed to Plug It in First

"Maybe 14 years ago, I was teaching a database programming course and everyone had to connect to my instructor machine to run queries and execute the programs. Students were complaining that they couldn't connect, so I spent a lot of time that morning walking around to the student workstations, troubleshooting the client software, pinging other machines, etc. One of the other trainers came in, and when I asked him what might be wrong, he walked over, looked at my instructor machine, and handed me the unconnected network cable with a wry smile. OOOOF! What could I do? Meekly I just shrugged my shoulders and said "By the way, the most important thing you can do when troubleshooting your network is to check that you are, indeed, connected to it." 

Can You Hear Me Now?

"Early in my career, when PCs had just become more mainstream, a bunch of mainframe programmers were sent to our company to learn PC programming. One of the students actually held the mouse in his hand and talked into it. He said "double click" and other commands but was getting nowhere."

You Mean Like This?

"At the instruction to place his mouse over a particular button, a student picked up the computer mouse and literally placed it over the button on the computer screen. Thankfully, my trainer maintained his composure and calmly explained to the gentleman that he should move his mouse along the desk to place the cursor on the screen in particular places."

A Pregnant Pause

I was making a presentation to our division of about 200 people when I was about 7 months pregnant when the power in the microphone went out. No big deal. I stepped away from the crowd and told them that I would speak louder, using my diaphragm. Someone in the back of the room yelled out that it looks like I lost my diaphragm several months ago.  I couldn’t stop laughing along with everyone else in the room. Every time we’d try to go back to the presentation we would all crack up. I think that if that person were to say that today, he’d get in trouble with HR.

If you have any stories about the funny things that happened to you while you were training, I'd love to hear from you.