Another reason to hate bureaucracy

Over the past month or so I've seen a few notices about some new phone system we're switching to. More to the point, these notices all talked about training sessions for the new phone system. I've seen the new phones and they look just like the system we used at my last school. They're not that complicated -- unless you want to use the fancy features such as "forwarding", "parking", ... Which no regular person does. Hence, I have ignored all those offers of training. In the past couple days, though, we've received two URGENT pleas to sign up for training:

Training is scheduled for Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, July 17 - 19. Training sessions will be held at 9 and 10:30 a.m. and 1, 2:30, and 4 p.m. and will last for one hour. Please e-mail me at XXX to schedule your training session. List your 1st, 2nd, and 3rd choices for training; I will attempt to schedule your 1st preference if at all possible. I will notify you via e-mail of your training date and session.

I still thought I could ignore that one. Just an hour or so ago, however, I got an email from the woman in charge of some government-funded course redesign thing we're doing:

As you have heard, XXX will be switching to a new telephone system later this week. During our Title III Leadership meeting this morning, XXX stressed the importance of the training provided for new system. She stated that the training is especially necessary for all Title III course redesign team members. If you have not already scheduled your training, please contact XXX with your time preference.

Honestly, what kind of "training" do most folks need for the new phone system? We need to be able to answer it when it rings and we need to be able to access our voicemail accounts. For the first task, you simply pick up the receiver and say, "Hello." For the second, well there's a little instruction book that comes with the phone that tells you how to access voicemail. Why would anyone think it necessary to harry an entire campus of folks into hourlong training sessions just to learn one task that can be explained on an instruction sheet. EGAD!

By the way, I'm signed up for tomorrow at 4:00. I don't have tenure.