Awesomely Bad Training Videos
Yay! It’s training video time! Your boss brings you into a room with a TV and a VCR. You’re so excited because you get to take a little break from your everyday routine and watch a video. You never get to watch videos at work. This is practically a day-cation without leaving the office. The only thing missing is the popcorn. You’re given a few pieces of paper but you don’t care cause the movie is about to start. Your boss presses play, turns out the lights, and leaves the room the way the dentist’s assistant hides behind a concrete wall before they zap you with X-ray radiation. With a few flickers of static fuzz, the tape catches speed and it begins.
All of a sudden, you remember why watching this video is mandatory: it’s so bad no one would watch it voluntarily. In an instant you flash back to every painful employee training video and awkward personal hygiene filmstrip that you’ve ever been forced to watch. You begin to panic. As the cheesy ‘Beverly Hills Cop’-inspired, synthesized soundtrack revs up, you look for a way out, but you can’t leave now. Your boss is out there. Maybe you could just day dream until it’s all over or even take a nap—but no. Those papers you were given are a quiz about the video! Granted the questions are so easy you could probably answer them without watching the video, but who knows? Maybe your boss is looking for specific answers taken from the stiff dialogue of these community theater rejects. It’s unavoidable. You walked right into their trap and now you’re going to have to… pay attention!
Unfortunately, there isn’t much we can say that will help you avoid bad training videos. They can happen to anyone. National RTAP does its part by producing training videos that are worth watching. Our team works very hard to make our videos educational and interesting. That’s not always an easy balance to meet. Training videos are most frequently criticized for either being too dry or too silly. Severely outdated styles can draw an easy chuckle too. But sometimes, like a classic B movie, it’s when they go wrong that they feel so right.
Let this blog provide a forum for the training videos that we love to loathe. Have you seen videos with hair styles and clothes that haven’t been seen in public since the Nixon administration, or acting so poor you’d think Ed Wood was behind the camera? Tell us about the worst training videos you’ve ever seen and why they’ve endeared themselves to your heart.
Better yet, check out some of the RTAP training videos (we’ll send them to you for free) and let us know what you think. Be honest. You won’t hurt our feelings. That’s the only way we can make them better. Besides, you just might find one so awesomely bad that you’ll have to add it to your personal guilty pleasure movie collection – you know, right between ‘Killer Klowns From Outer Space’ and ‘Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo’ – or maybe that’s just me.
Why do we blog?
Today, blogs are nearing the same esteem as published journalistic articles, editorial columns, or even primary sources for news gatherers. We, however, have often considered blogging to be the 21st century equivalent of yelling at your TV. Sure, you can be as loud as you want. You can be opinionated and funny, you can even be right, but it’s not going to change what’s going on in the world. We don’t mean to imply that one voice can’t make a significant impact. In fact, we believe the opposite. Though, in order for one person to make a difference, others have to listen.
Unfortunately right now, it’s just too easy for everyone else to get wrapped up in yelling at their own TVs, being just as opinionated—though not nearly as funny or as right as you are. Everyone’s talking and no one is listening. But what is actually getting done? It is so difficult for one person’s good ideas take root when the “blogoshpere” seems to be little more than know-it-all (or should I say know-nothing) soap-box orators and carnival barkers, desperately shouting over one another to get thirty seconds of your attention.
So why are we blogging here if it’s not going to make any difference? Aren’t we just adding to the noise? Well, that’s just it. This is a totally different kind of blog. In fact, it’s hardly a blog in the traditional sense at all. We had even considered calling it an “un-blog” or a “reverse blog” or even a “golb” but we weren’t sure how many would get it. Anyway, this blog is so special, so radical, so earth-shatteringly ground breaking (not to mention humble) because it’s not all about what we have to say. We’re not here to yell at the TV. We’re here to LISTEN to YOU. Not only are we going to listen to your questions and opinions, but we actually want to help you, and that changes the game entirely.
We know that you’re the kind of person who makes a difference in your community and we want you to know that the R-TRAC specialists are here to assist you in any way we can. We’re ready to answer your questions, provide you with training resources, and help you conduct research. It’s our goal to give you the tools you need to make a positive impact. Not only will you be getting the services of R-TRAC, but you’ll be able to receive input and assistance from other contemporaries in the fields of rural transit from across the country.
So don’t be shy. Tell us what’s happening in your neck of the woods. What issues are impacting your business? What improvements have you made in your service area that others could make as well? We want your concerns, your successes, your questions, and your solutions so that we can help you improve your community, and hopefully, thanks to your contributions, the national transit community at large.
Now it’s time to get active. Leave us a comment here on the blog. Send us an email at info@nationalrtap.org. Call us toll free at 888-589-6821, or type away and chat with us live using the Chat with a Specialist feature on our homepage. We’re waiting for your voice.
