impractical tyrant


possibly worth it for the personality quiz

Earlier this week I attended a conflict management seminar. This seminar was pitched at women – which kind of went against my feminist sensibilities, but hey, whatever. I do have some issues at SML in handling aggressive, bullying dickheads (and people who lie outrageously – don’t even get me started) and I tend to brood for days and days on those negative interactions and let it impact my non-SML life way, way too much – so I was hoping to get some tips from the cranky lady seminar on how to overcome this.

And wow! I’ve never been in a time-share presentation, but I imagine that it would be been very much like the cranky lady seminar. It was All Selling All The Time – so much emphasis on flogging the very many, very over-priced “learning materials” at every opportunity (a $500 value, but $299.95 for today only!, $650 value, but today only $399.95). Or a cult. Or Amway. Or Tony Robbins.

There were around 60 women attending. The presenter was a very bouncy late-40s American lady who had been flown out for this series. She sounded exactly like Katy Sagal. The day very much stuck to the seminar format, so there was little to no interaction with the other participants.

Some highlights:

  • the 15 minutes of instruction on how to fill in the 10 question evaluation form and big emphasis on rating her highly: “the [unnamed provider] average is 8.5, I usually rate higher! Tell me what you need for you give me a 10!”
  • the selling
  • the lengthy rant about legalising pot in washington state. “it’s a gateway drug”, “they are in for a whole lot of social problems” and “I once had medical marijuana practitioners in a class and told them you’re really drug dealers!”
  • the selling
  • “women are just wired differently from men, it’s a fact!” (WTAF?)
  • mentioning the “law of attraction” (it’s just science!) and The Secret
  • the selling
  • lengthily pimping her no 1 itunes business audiobook
  • name-checking Tony Robbins
  • the selling
  • the many people who actually spent hundreds of dollars on learning materials
  • dropping a 15 minute speed-reading software sales demo into the post-lunch session.
  • the selling

The day was utterly mind-boggling and the actual non-sales, non-bizarre content was nothing I hadn’t heard before. Though when NotKaty casually mentioned she’d contacted people in the past who had given unfavourable evaluations (for development purposes, of course), I naturally gave the high rating.

Definitely something to add to the list of life experiences, but not necessarily one I’d been keen to repeat.

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