Meeting and Webinars and Training, Oh My!

We all have to do these things, right?  Meetings, webinars and training.  For the most part I think they're pretty informative. Boring as hell, but informative.  It's a nice opportunity to shut my door, hit the do not disturb button on my phone and shut my door for an hour or two.

My field has constant changes in services, procedures, and policy so I'm normally in one type of meeting or another a couple of days a week.  I get to connect with people that I normally don't speak with on a regular basis and it's a good way to throw around ideas and share stories.

For all my talk about how my clients don't pay attention or listen to me, I've discovered that several of my colleagues seem to suffer the same affliction.

I'm currently in the middle of a federally funded program that requires monthly webinars for updates and information sharing.  This program has been going on for four months.  Absolutely nothing has changed in this program. Nothing. It's pretty simple too. In order for someone to be eligible, they have to be unemployed, low income, living within a certain area and new to the program.  If they meet those qualifications, they are eligible.

Every single month when I'm stuck in this webinar people say things like this:

I have a client who is unemployed, low income and lives within the specific area. She used the program before. Can she sign up again?

Webinar Host: No. In order to be eligible, the client must be unemployed, low income, living within a certain area and new to the program. Prior clients are not eligible. 


I have a client that has never used the program before and she meets all of the other qualifies except she just moved to another area. Can I sign her up?


Webinar Host: No. In order to be eligible, the client must be unemployed, low income, living within a certain area and new to the program. Clients living outside of the area are not eligible.


My client is low income, not a prior client and lives in the area. She just got a job, but only works like ten hours a week. Can I sign her up?

Webinar Host: No. In order to be eligible, the client must be unemployed, low income, living within a certain area and new to the program. Clients who are employed are not eligible.

 

I wish we had buzzers to use whenever someone asks a question when the answer was immediately provided two seconds before they asked.  This also gives me great respect for the webinar hosts because I don't know how many times I would have to answer the same questions over and over again without threatening great bodily harm to those that do.

/Reading and Comprehension FAIL!

-Dedicated Public Servant