3 critical mistakes
I was required to attend a presentation cum training session at Company X today, conducted by a local HR manageress. I didn’t exactly know what was it all about, but what I know was - upon completion of the session, I would become a much better person and be able to effectively fill in an electronic form to tell my boss how awesome I am (believe it man, this is real).
Unfortunately, that did not happen. That was because I walked out of the session halfway through. Why? Because if I don’t, I might snore inside the room and attract a lot of unwanted attention. Yes, it was ridiculously boring, full of crap and an utter waste of time. Thanks to the bozo HR manageress who committed the 3 critical mistakes that a presenter should not ever commit. If you do not already know what are the 3 critical mistakes, count your blessings already and let me enlighten you here:
1) Not knowing too well the content of the subject
This is the motherfuckest of all sins combined, and yet is the most committed amongst the three. You should know what you are presenting like it is the back of your hands. At every depth and every angle. With that, you should have very little dependence on notes or slides, and naturally, you’d have the ability to push the information well.
The HR hag violated this over and over again. She made the audience sit for a whole 10 minutes idling just so that she could organize her slides in proper order lest she might forget why was she there. She’s making use of 50 executives’ time to make up for her incompetency. It’s a gross wastage of manhours. It’s evident that the bitch was not well prepared and for that reason alone, she ought to have her dental benefits removed.
2) Using lengthy descriptions/articles in presentation slides.
Slides should be terse and straight to the point. Use graphics or charts to illustrate a point/objective, then elaborate orally. This is very closely related to mistake# 1 above. If you’re well prepared and know your shit well, technically, you won’t be needing any slides at all to start your ritual. You’d just need some oxygen and a functioning brain. The slides should be there for purely cosmetic illustrations and to bring the points across.
HR hag embellished her slides with verbose write ups, and asked the participants to read from the slides themselves. If I need to read articles, I could have done it in the comfort of my own cubicle, or even at home… scratching my balls at the same time, whenever I feel like it. Why would I need her to ‘present’ it to me? That goes on to show how redundant her role was in the training. For that, she ought to have her wage removed. A janitor would have better value than her.
3) The presenter reads directly from the presentation slides.
This is closely related to both mistake#1 and mistake#2 above. When you’re too dumb to know what you’re talking about and starts projecting slides that have more words than the bible, the next thing you’ll automatically do is to read straight from the slides yourself. This is the second most common mistake after mistake#1. The fuck I need you to read off the slides for me.
When HR hag wasn’t asking us to read from the slides on our own, she would read it out loud for us as if we were all as blind as a bat. Reminded me of our primary years, when our teacher required us to read out loud from the textbook to make sure that none of us are dyslexic or retarded. In this case, it just made her look like a complete dimwit for making all the 3 critical mistakes in one cue.
That was why I walked out of the presentation/training session. The bitch was wasting my time.
Good on you! She needs to read this entry.
I especially hate the “read from slides” part. I don’t know la but to me, its EXTREMELY rude when someone who is supposed to be speaking TO the audience turns his/ her back to them and stares at the screen while reading!
Hrm sounds EXACTLY like my lecturers when I was in Uni.
I hear you wei. What’s worse is if that happens weekly in lectures; thank god I just graduated from such a hellhole. Anyway I feel you about the walking out thing too. I withdrew from a visual basic class even though it left an ugly mark on my transcript. Why? Because the professor was so incompetent she read constantly from the book, made the $500 we paid for her class “worthwhile” by telling us which important points to highlight in the textbook AND gave homework assignments of guess what-retyping the codes already given in the book.
No wonder you would have fallen asleep. I bet everyone in that room would too or probably had. Sometimes I just don’t understand why give a presentation for the sake of giving without really thoroughly think it through. Send her back to college to learn the skill of giving a presentation.
hate these kind of people totally. they bore us to death.
my lecturers does the same thing together with a monotonous voice. now my HR manager too, wasting my time presenting to me about permanent staff benefits when i am just a temp staff. it doesnt help much with that nice soothing voice of hers.
zzzzzz…
well… it might have been a turn table if she’s a hot stuff….
does she smell nice?
Well well, most people using slide don’t understand the meaning of using slide. So far, many local presenter do this when they use powerpoint slide. Some even cramp in so many words until the slide become essay. Audience from 3 meters away are force to read miniscule word from the slide, like reading a point 5 text from a A4 paper.
OTH, Malaysia government servants/politikus love text filled slide. Because MANY can’t grasp the English word from the presenter
toothless - I called her a ‘HR hag’. Do you reckon someone given a name like that would smell nice and look hot? Come on lar…
Yeah reminds me of the fucking incompetent shits I had as lecturers.
I only had a few good ones.
Fuck there was even one that needed a calculator to do some addition that had a bunch of zeros in them.
Someone shouted out loud “Its okay, take your time!”
This post combines two of my pet peeves. HR reps AND bad public speakers. I especially can’t stand overly perky and extremely politically correct HR personnel. Then again, I think those must be prerequisites for the job. Spot on, Mike.
Well at least you can leave, I have to sit through all the moronic read-along slide lectures given by apes masquerading as lecturers at my college, you know for attendance recording. Our colleges should have a screening test because even ones that can’t ’speaking korek engrish’ are able to get job as lecturers in international based colleges. -_-