I had my first day of real, grown up work today. I am officially grown up; I have no doubts about that at all. I went in there this morning at 8:30 as somone who didn't care about a 401k or health insurance. Thirty minutes later, I was running around the office, shaking my fists and yelling, "You call that a copay?!?!" It's actually very nice there. I get my own office with a window. That window affords me a nice view of the parking lot and the dumpster, but I figure if I can prove my mettle in monitoring the parking lot and the dumpster, I can probably get promoted to watching the septic tank. "Hey buddy, ever heard of a recycling bin?" and "I KNOW you're not trying to fit that battleship in the Compact Car Parking Only!" are just a few of the threatening phrases that will be bellowed from my office in the coming days.
In all seriousness, I am excited about working at this place. The work will be both interesting and challenging, and I am surrounded by nice, competent people. I can only hope that when it comes time to dole out the raises, this paragraph, in some small way, becomes the cornerstone of my performance evaluation. I am confident of this being a good fit for me because I subscribe to a theory where you can judge a place of employment based on your first day there. Here's a quick story regarding this theory.
Like everyone else who has ever operated a computer, I worked for a dot-com in 2000/2001. I didn't really know what they did, but it sure looked impressive during the interview. They had free coke machines and a Playstation, and they were going to give me a lot of money for doing very little. It all sounded great until my first day there.
I was a student and had made it very clear that I could only work in the afternoons. Everyone I'd be working with knew this, and assured me it was fine. And so, imagine my surprise when I get back from class and start to get ready for my first day, only to learn that my place of employment had left me 3 messages, wondering what kind of idiot didn't show up for his first day of work. When I finally make it down there, I discover that someone else was in my desk. He worked a different shift and so he'd be there for another hour and a half. No one there knew who I was or what I was supposed to be doing, because I had been told to communicate with the wrong group of people. Ahh, good times.
I was almost in shock when, 2 months later, they laid everyone off. Why, it was like Henry Ford himself ran that place! That place was a Harvard Business Review article in the making and everyone knew it. I'm no business visionary or anything, but I'm guessing it's a bad sign when I am the voice of moderation and reason at a place of business. I would say things like, "Hmm, maybe you guys should stop looking at internet porn and do some work," and everyone would nod sagely like I was Confucius. I suppose this is why I got assigned to dumpster watch at the new place.
Also, I just finished the new Harry Potter. I couldn't believe that magic dragon ate them all! Yeah, I don't know anything about Harry Potter, but I hope that if I spread that rumor around, people will be so depressed about it that they stop talking to me about it. It sounds like a neat story and everything, but I've had a few too many conversations over the past few days where someone expounds on the book for a few hours, expecting me to have an idea of what they're saying. And when I reveal to them that I haven't read any Harry Potter, they get really animated and tell me I must, I MUST! That's like 5000 pages, right? If I'm reading 5000 pages of anything, it's going to be either the entire Baby Sitters Club series or just my favorite parts from Hank the Cow Dog over and over.
Posted by Cody at June 25, 2003 9:17 PM