Today, for the first time, our team of five split in two. Richard and one other continued doing the sessions we've done all week, and the rest of us (two trainers and the training manager) headed off to the computer labs for some hands-on training. Since there were two sessions, that meant that we each got a chance to do the training (our first on this one in front of actual mollusk handlers).

This training was a bit less harried than the rest of the week, merely because the people who attended seemed happy to at least be able to follow along using the software, and also because they didn't seem to be nearly as surly. Plus it helped that, since the computer lab was huge, this room actually had a working microphone (unlike the earlier training sessions this week where we were trying to somehow yell loud enough so that 100 surly mollusk handlers could hear us).

I think those of us in the computer labs got the better end of the deal. Richard and his training partner reported back that they got the brunt of the anger from the mollusk handlers in today's sessions, mainly because they had a number of the union reps show up, sporting massive chips on their shoulders and armed with a rather nasty agenda. Let's just say that it wasn't pretty.

By the time training finished it was too late to try to drive home without battling rush-hour traffic, so we decided we might as well save ourselves the stress and have dinner. We found ourselves a restaurant far enough away from the training sites to be safe, and over plates of pasta and then massive slices of incredibly decadent desserts (cheesecake and chocolate cake smothered in rich chocolate ganache) we vented and laughed and recapped our week with much rolling of eyes, and laughed some more, and managed to reach the conclusion that it wasn't really as bad as we'd feared, and actually it was kind of fun.