It did sting a little.

I come back from holidays and I ask my trainee, "Are you back with me now?" She says "If it's okay with you, I'd rather stay with "Joe"." (names have been changed to protect the innocent) OK. "I just learned so much more from him," she says. The conversation lasted another 20 seconds or so. I respected her wishes and told her where "Joe" was.

I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. One one hand, it's kind of a slap in the face. And on the other hand, I'm almost glad to be rid of her. She said that Joe explained things to her and let her do it, whereas I would show her how to do it the first time (while explaining) and then got her to do it. Actually doing it myself helps me explain it better. She learns better by doing it herself. Her learning style and my teaching style didn't match. Sometimes when I was explaining things to her I felt she was ignoring me. And other times, I'd tell her how to correct something and ten minutes later she'd totally ignore the problem and not implement the solution. I think I'd be better off training a new hire instead of a transfer. Sometimes I got the feeling she thought I was "just a kid".

Yeah, Joe's been here longer than me and has been doing this job longer than me and has been training longer than me and probably knows more than me but for her to be so blunt about it....Like I said, it was a blow to my ego, but if she ends up sucking at her job, at least you can't pin it on me. Besides, watching someone work, waiting for a training opp is pretty damn boring.

Whatever.