I'm just saying that as a department, our training department lacks the credibility to be respected and admired, but there individual exceptions. Our training department represents 15% of the non-members (okay, I admit that's small compared to the top three seniority groups who combined, represent 69% of our non-members) and is comprised mostly of pilots who just camp out in the training complex in MEM, dishing out obscure insignificant trivia about the plane and procedures when very few of them ever really get out on the road to experience it themselves. I think if our instructor force wants to be taken seriously (maybe they don't care, I don't know), they need to be highly experienced in the procedures we deal with every day so they can teach from both a book knowledge basis as well as a personal experience basis. How many times are we supposed to endure a higher-than-thou instructor telling me how to operate in CAN who himself has never been there? Why must my guest-help instructor actually be an FO who has received some sort of bastardized left seat checkout so he can play captain for my evaluation but has never actually been a captain? And yes, it makes a difference.

As to the rumors attributed to being sourced from the training department, past experience has demonstrated that they're usually false. I wonder if the stuff coming from our instructors is intentional mis-information because it's the home to so many non-members and/or they are a captive audience for our management's manipulative behavior.

Listen and enjoy their rumor mill if you want but for me I harbor no admiration for them and ignore their silly little stories.