Oh my! Have you ever dealt with an energy vampire?

Do you even know what an energy vampire is? An energy vampire is someone who sucks the energy out of you or out of the room. 

As a trainer, I deal with all sorts of people and attitudes all the time. I was on a project at a hospital once and a doctor, who was also the department head said “we’re all just overgrown teenagers, don’t let us get to you!” That actually helped with some groups. 

I don’t stress out or get offended by what people say, in terms of the applications I am teaching, there are a lot of reasons they may be resistant. Some pout, some come kicking and screaming, some give you that look, you know, “ok show me something, prove yourself”, you know, teenagers! Now, other are polite and let me walk them through things and sometimes they learn a something,  ya never know!

The thing you remember, it’s not me they’re directing this at, I’m just the wall they’re slinging at.  They don’t know me personally,  I’m the one they’re taking their feelings out on. None of it has stopped me or scared me off, I keep coming back.

Recently two people really tested me. They exhausted me, sucked my energy, scwooooop [sucking sound, ha ha].

One never stopped talking while I was trying to show them the system. This person kept clicking buttons on the screen, “I usually do this and this and that and this and that” it went on for a minute…even when people are experienced, sometimes I can tell them something they didn’t know or maybe give them a trick or two or a shortcut. This person had no time or interest, not even as a courtesy, so I stepped back and said, “you do what you normally do and I’ll watch, ask me questions if you have any”.

The other person was very self important and very knowledgeable in a lot of areas, but not 100% in one of the things I was showing them.  Didn’t matter, they were going to tell me what they thought every step of the way and how they did this and that and this makes no sense and why do we do that, not efficient. They also seemed to hate their keyboard! Remember the older keyboards you had to mash the keys or someone who tries to kill the keys? This is not one of those keyboards, this is just that person! I couldn’t put my hands on the desk, it kept jumping!

I kept my cool with both, smiled and did what I could for them, stayed positive and encouraged where I could. I talked to their managers about how it went and since the managers know them, it wasn’t a complete surprise. 

It happens, you can’t have total angels every time, right?! Tomorrow is a new day!

No, I’m not a three year old! Well, maybe sometimes!

I’m staying in a hotel that has one of those newer elevator system, where you enter the floor you want on the touch screen near the elevators and it displays which elevator to take.

The hard part is, when you walk into the elevator car, you still look for the buttons to push and all you have are the open and close buttons, oh and the emergency buttons. And everyone sees you looking and smiles because they did the same thing!

Then, there’s that momentary feeling of being incomplete because you didn’t push the button or ask someone to push the button or watch someone push the button. Of course, at that point you’re almost transported back to childhood when you fought over pushing the buttons! 

Do you remember those days? Of course you did because inadvertently, you end up in an elevator with a little kid who just has to push the button or it gets ugly!

It’s ok, I’m over it, I’ll push the buttons on the next elevator, well, as long as there’s no kid on it!