The department's (technical) administrator had (reluctantly) scheduled a two-hour training session with a university HR person, in the middle of summer during vacation season, on how to use the new 'workplan' feature to schedule time and costs in the ERP system. This is a new requirement by the federal government. Following two change of room announcements, the session's two attendees arrive five minutes late, followed by the trainer, since there was no activity in the appointed location.
After reviewing a flow chart of how we were supposed to develop workplans, he claims that we were misinformed by our department about how things were supposed to be done. Lacking a wireless connection to the university intranet, he couldn't get into the practical details. I fix this, allowing him to demonstrate what department supervisors and senior people are supposed to do in the HR system. Scrolling rapidly through several hundred form fields, it's clear that no one in the room is providing or receiving education.
We ask about why we needed to do both paper and on-line workplans, to which we replied that we had received different information from everyone in our department. Thirty minutes after starting, he had run out of material (or was discouraged when we asked 'Can just ANYONE in the system approve another person's workplan since supervisory relationships are not defined in the database?'). Approaching the door, as gentle pleading had kept us standing at our seats for several minutes, we intercepted the department head en passant, and asked him to offer some clarity.
Bottom line from the department: Do what the department has said; we'll fix it in August a few days before the September deadline.
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