Corporate Conformance Training
21So, the current training module I’m mandated has what corporate obviously thought would be a cute little Einstein cartoon narrating the lessons. I can’t skip ahead or ffwd, so I’m forced to listen to a thick, halting, fake German accent, taking up twice as much time as necessary. So… congratulations?.. on making me hate one of my heroes. WTG, The Corporation, Inc
Unfortunately, I can’t select another language for this training, as it is targeted to our business area and not corporate-wide. I once took sexual harassment training in Turkish. I’m still no good at harassing.
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As part of my job I am ‘given’ remote access to many customer systems. To get and keep this access I have to complete a set of training for each customer. Every customer has almost the same topics, so I get to complete 10+ cyber security training sessions a year.
The worst was when someone backed their car into someone at a customer parking lot (in a state I have never visited). In their ‘lessons learned’ they decided that employees need training on how to backup a car. So HR found/bought a relevant training module and clicked the ‘required for all employees’ button. Naturally that included me, a non-employee, who doesn’t own a car, and will never visit a parking lot belonging to that customer.
The training module only included one topic: How to safely backup a car (not trucks, van, or trailers). It was over 3 hours long, but it was split into 30-45 second clips that I had to acknowledge and click Next on for every single one. None of the clips preloaded so it had to buffer every new clip. About half the training was on the topic avoiding parking spots that you would have to back out of and stated “you may never have to back up your car again”. Implying that both parallel parking and driveways don’t exist. I feel like the authors brain would explode if they visited my area. The other half was full of testimonies from people who backed into things with their car (I think most were recorded as part of court mandated training for people who accidentally hurt people backing up their car). The testimonies did not include any helpful tips, just warnings about how bad it can be if you don’t do it safely.
Naturally I charge training time back to the customer.
@fibrs86
Oh heck yeah! And they don’t get a discounted rate for that, either!
I also love “click here for supplemental information” with dead links. Nothing really puts on the professional polish like a dead link.
/image corporatespeak
@f00l Is this strategically aligned and enabling value-driven outcomes?
It’s actually called “Corporate Compliance Training” but I think thread title is accurate.
Incidentally, what are your corporate training peeves?
Another module we have to renew every year is Fire Extinguisher Training. There’s this horrible little interactive thing like a bad video game that you have to find the magic 1x1 pixel area to pull the pin, and a 2x1 area to handle the nozzle and mechanically sweep while a cartoon fire consumes cartoon paper in a cartoon wastebasket. I swear, if a fire ever breaks out at work, I’ll throw the fire extinguisher on the floor, yank a mouse out of the closest computer and look befuzzled that it isn’t working.
EVERY YEAR!
Like I’m going to forget how to use the fire extinguisher that HAS THE INSTRUCTIONS PRINTED ON ITS SIDE after a year’s time. Like 366 days, my brain will magically erase that important information.
Another peeve, my boss’s boss “needs” yearly training performed 1 month early, so my boss needs yearly training performed 1 month earlier than that. You’re pestered for training due within 90 days and at 60 days, an all-out panic ensues. Reasonable, I guess, considering the place will burn down on day 366 if we’re not vigilant.
@PocketBrain I get to take the same drag it out, no way to fast forward or read a transcript, boring and dumbed down sexual harassment training each year. I teach this crap no less. Sigh. I have another screen up and do something else while each page drags on. Of course they then ask a stupid question periodically that you have to answer to move the entire thing forward.
@PocketBrain
Do you get the post-training “voluntary and anonymous” follow-up survey nag emails for weeks afterwards?
If they’re voluntary and anonymous, how and why do they know to keep sending me increasingly more urgent notices to fill out the damned survey?
@PocketBrain this reminds me so much of the annual, 90 & 180 day training when I was in the Air Force. OMG, it never ended. After so many years of it you’d feel like you could give the training yourself.
@PocketBrain I get this. Every year I have to do a safety and active shooter course, and then every two years I have to recertify on power equipment. Apparently I’m going to forget how to drive a forklift suddenly even if I do it all the time.
@PocketBrain @RiotDemon for me it was HIPAA training.
So, is it OK to look at a family member’s records, as long as you believe they’d be OK with it?
I ignored all of the reminder emails for one of those training modules (it was one I’ve done many times) to see what would happen. Then one day I got a frantic IM from HR saying they had to report their compliance to corporate today and could I please take the training. VPN wasn’t working that day, so I drove into the office just to do it. So, not very successful experiment. Not worth ruining someone else’s day for my troublemaking whims.
@walarney sometimes those corporate reminder emails get lost in the mess of you know… Doing your job.
Usually they send it out a week or two for the general emails then you people manager starts pinging you
We have about a multiple hundred question course training we have to take every year. Every year I have the same thought:
Instead of saying code red, blue, purple, whatever, just say “fire” or “active shooter”… No one is going to remember what code silver is six months after training if it never gets used (which I guess is why they make us relearn it each year).
@OnionSoup I assume the idea is that they could alert people to calmly evacuate without alerting the shooter. But let’s be realistic. If there is a shooter they probably worked there. And regardless no one is going to be calm.
For that kind of shit hit the alarm and practice evac. Shooter will know evac points anyway. Any other disaster the goal is get out. Work place shooters usually have a target then kill themsves. None of its good but. Confusing everyone and pointless training doesn’t help much. I guess if you have lockable doors maybe shelter in place…
@OnionSoup @unksol Once a workplace (or even nearby community) has had an active shooter incident, leaders are compelled from various directions to begin training: prevention, recognition, alarm/communication, etc.
Nobody wants to be the employer whose survivors say “It was chaos. I didn’t know what to do.”
@compunaut @unksol I get that.
But why say “Code …” And make up some codeword instead of saying “active shooter”.
It seems overly complicating things to me. Some people will forget what code “turquoise with yellow spots” means after a few months. We all know what “dude shooting a gun” means.
Reminds me of my sociology classes in University. Sociology, the science of making up complex words to describe mundane things about society that could be explained clearer and easier without the made up word.
@compunaut @OnionSoup @unksol our hospitals here all went to “plain language codes” a few years ago. So instead of “condition 3-0” accompanied by 3 beeps, it’s “fire alert”. I think a lot of people were surprised that nobody panics. And when you hear “amber alert” instead of “code pink” i have to think people are more alert and could possibly stop something.
@compunaut @OnionSoup @unksol @ybmuG Our hospital still does color coded alerts. I think because they want people “in the know” to know what to do, but the patients and guests to not be alarmed and cause chaos. When I was hired in, HR put a sticker on the back of my badge that showed what each code meant. But subsequent badges didn’t have the same sticker.
@OnionSoup If they don’t have a Code Plaid that means “we’re going way too fast with this, let’s back off and chillout”, they need it.
Where my wife works, guests are mostly children. They use code 1, code 2, code 3. You can probably guess their meanings.
Bummer… guess you better keep practicing!
@chienfou I hear trump an cuomo are opening a bipartisan university to address this gap.
Huuuuuge line of guest lectures
@chienfou @unksol tons of Hollywood stars will be there to give their support and advice
@mbersiam @unksol
OK. Y’all behave now. I believe there are plenty of dickwads on both sides of the aisle on this issue!!
@chienfou you lost me. I listed the current top two on both sides? Well I guess gaetz… But he has no experience running a “university” and still denies what he did so… Eh…
@unksol
Sorry… I lumped you into the ‘group’ when the field expanded to included Hollywood actors (who are generally associated with ‘left-wing, democrat, liberal’ leanings). I was trying to head off a bunch of political piling on.
Mea culpa…
@chienfou lol no I get it. Although I think Hollywood was a fair add considering we all know the ones who have got in trouble. Any time the t word comes out things could go side ways but creeps be creeps. I think we can all get behind that
@chienfou @unksol You mean libtard Hollywood folk like Ronnie “Raygun”, Charlton Heston, Kanye, Kirstey Alley, Dennis Quaid, John Voight, etc? Or is “Hollywood” just regular old-fashioned Macarthy-ist dog whistle anti-Semitism? I get confused as to which side “Hollywood” people mean.
@chienfou @mike808 and there would be the political crap we don’t need to get into…
This was a good joke about harassment. We know trump does cause he brags about being a perv. We know cuomo does. We know some Hollywood directors do. People in power can abuse it and be creeps. Nothing new.
That is all.
@chienfou @unksol Just calling out the bullshit about Hollywood being “generally all leftists and libruls” that gets repeated as if it were true. You yourself made that claim. So now you’re bent about both-siderism?
And for the record, harassment nothing to me.
@chienfou @mike808 I really am just not following.
We started with harassment.
Trump is an admitted sexual harasser. With a ton of accusers. Cuomo seems to be as well although he won’t admit it.
Powerful politicians being creeps. Happens.
Then ok Hollywood director annother proven category of people who had power and abused it. Nothing to do with politics. Or all directors. A minority were fucked up and went to prison . They happen.
Then you rolled in with “libtard” and “dog whistle” and a bunch of off topic political bs.
I’m really lost. It’s possible to acknowledge that powerful people have a higher opportunity and rate of abuse and are not held to account.
“Just calling out the bullshit about Hollywood being “generally all leftists and libruls” that gets repeated as if it were true. You yourself made that claim”
I have no idea where you got that I said anything about hollywood politics because I never stated anything about politics. At all. We were talking about a completely non political subject.
@unskol:
@chienfou said:
And then they stuck in a pre-emptive Godwin rule to cancel any objection or both-siderism. Fuck that. It’s a bullshit argument to make, and I called it out for what it was is all.
Yea, right. And I’m the Queen Mother.
And it was actors that were called out, not directors in the Hollywood reference. But I’m sure there isn’t the baseless “generally associated with ‘left-wing, Democratic, liberal’ leanings” postulated. Any more than the generally associated with "right-wing nutjob Christo-fascist Rethuglican’ leanings.
Notice how there is no substantiation as to who exactly has made or is making these “general associations”. Because it is just wishful self-fulfilling thinking.
Watch more of our White House Press Secretary Psaki handling the Fox so-called “journalists” raise questions that use the same (lack of) logic in both their premises and their questions to see what I’m talking about. It’s like we’ve all gotten so dumbed down with idiocy and bombarded with lies daily fir the last four years that we’ve forgotten how to critically process what people are actually saying when they say shit like that.
@mike808
Wow.
from Opensecrets.org
@chienfou Indeed. Under $30K total in contributions towards both parties. I don’t think that’s a meaningful statistic to start with, given almost 4 BILLION was raised and that had to come from somewhere.
source.
@mike808
While I did not say this list was complete, I think the trend is pretty evident.
Here is a list of 40 celebrities that donated to a variety of political causes. Without doing the math, it is easy to see that this list includes WAY more than the $30K.
The point of the graph was not to indicate the amount of money, just the distribution of it in general.
@chienfou I don’t think monetary contributions can really measure political impact, much less “bias” particularly with respect to celebrity.
A Rush Limbaugh has an outsized effect and I doubt his contributions in y/hammering away for several hours a day, every day shilling for the Republican party were ever considered as dollar-denominated political contributions. Or Hannity or any of the Fox commentators.
Measuring “celebrity” is just entirely too subjective.
My point wasn’t to make a both-siderism claim, it was to address wishful claims being presented as “generally accepted” truths without any real basis or disclosure that it’s all just unsubstantiated opinion being over exaggerated to falsely claim representation of a larger population than one (the claimant).
It is a fallacious argument of ad populum (aka bandwagon fallacy).
@mike808
Well, that obviously failed so…
FTFY:
I made sure I got in my shot and then pre-emptively appeal to shut down discussion or opposing views under pretense of being a nice guy.
Stay classy.
@PocketBrain
Did you learn how to say:
@mike808
No, sorry, none of it stuck.
/giphy condolences
On the impending loss of your sanity.
@f00l
not impending
only takes one for it to be gone
Some years our company training modules allow you to take a pretest and skip the module if you aren’t a computer challenged individual who doesn’t understand basic security. Sometimes they don’t. Its basic common sense and the questions don’t change much so I’m not sure what the pattern is. Maybe if they made an update somewhere but who cares. It’s basic common sense ethics/compliance/security/privacy. And if you don’t know or it looks at all weird report it or ask compliance officer.
The test phishing emails they send out now and then are just sad.
I love the fake phishing emails! And sometimes I click the button to report particularly dumb HR memos as phishing attempts.
@walarney HR has asked me to stop reporting emails from the 3rd party companies they hire for internal surveys. HR doesn’t warn anyone the emails are coming and they look incredibly phishy. Some of them even ask for personal or health related information.
@fibrs86 @walarney we don’t get any third party emails. Anything external looking for that crap is a dead giveaway. And anything generic from an unknown party… But I get 100+ emails a day so the fact that they tests are so obvious I normally notice them says something.
If they work with them those request should come from corporate and I still wouldn’t tell them lol
Turkish?
In the future everyone should speak Esperanto.
No krokodilo!
/giphy Esperanto flag
Ok… That’s not the right flag.
/giphy Esperanto Green star
@OnionSoup
Mi amas esperanton!
@PocketBrain mi ankaŭ, mi lernis Esperanton por mian 40 naskiĝtagon.
Few months before I turned 40 I decided, I’m going to read a book in a foreign language before I turn 40. Despite already knowing a small amount of French and a moderate amount German, I decided to do Esperanto… Just because I knew it was super easy. Took the Duolingo course in 6 weeks and then ordered and read (and actually understood with occasional use of dictionary) the Brothers Grimm in Esperanto (actually I only read the first three stories and then got distracted, but I count it). You can’t do that in six weeks with any other language… Lol… Well you might be able to, but I can’t… I wish everyone took a semester of Esperanto in Highschool and then the whole world could comunicate.
That was 2 years ago. I’ve forgot a lot by now, but still surprisingly remember a lot. I do need to do a refresher course though. Still have my Esperanto keyboard installed on my phone.
I know a little bit about electricity and radiation. The annual safety training on each is flat out wrong on several questions. Very confidence inspiring.
It must be corporate training season, since this thread is back.
This year my company decided to split the cyber security training into 3-5 minute videos and release about 4 a week. We are on week 6 of this. I can’t imagine how much work this setup is for the people who have to bug the people who are behind on their training.
@fibrs86 you either work for my company or they are farming it out to the same subcontractor.
@unksol Did this week’s videos include a spy pretending to be a overnight cleaning woman and SLOWLY LICKING HER HAND THEN PUTTING THAT HAND IN A BIG BOWL OF M&MS ON SOMEONE’S DESK?? cause that is how my week went.
@fibrs86 no. No. No it did not. Was she trying to… Seduce you or…?
That seems like a weird way to advertise she wants to play with your semi spherical pocessions?
Even the social engineering BS would be less obvious unless… They are targeting you for some weird sex thing? How do you feel about the green M&M?
I tried to examine an obvious phishing training link on my phone but URL previews were on, so phone helpfully loaded the page. I blame Apple for this. I distinctly remember turning that feature off. Now I have to watch the remedial shame videos.
@InnocuousFarmer
Be careful as the preview applies to SMS messages too!
There are zero-day drive-by compromises using SMS messages to infect phones.
That may also be what the “preview” option applies to. It obviously would not apply to an email sent to you that clearly declared itself as a webpage.
Unless you’re talking about an inline URL that gets displayed in its own frame inside your email viewer.
@mike808 Yup, that latter thing. In iOS, if you “3D Touch” or “long press” a link, by default, it pops up a modal/contextual kinda inline web view containing the page. I turn that off because that is the same mechanism you use in iOS to inspect image alt text and/or the URL that a link is pointed at.
So I get obvious white hat phishing email, think, “eh I’ll look at this link’s address, and make sure it’s actually X company,” and then my phone outs me as one of those clueless email link clickers!
So now it’s a 15 minute video of “Hello, hapless computer user. Did you know that NEVER CLICK THE LINK. Some users don’t understand to NEVER CLICK THE LINK.”
I’m not too worried about actual exploitation, not a high enough value target for expensive targeted attacks like that – local code execution via WebKit exploitation. Though… I dunno. Maybe eventually that’ll happen, if the company takes on the right kinda project. Man, I really hate link preview features in general, and the broad trend toward making actual URLs harder to identify.
@mike808 I mean, the impulse is all wrong. It’s like, “Users sure seem to suck at driving. It’s probably that these steering wheels are so mechanical and confusing. Let’s hide them.”