Being New

Settling In

When your half-baked training session is complete, you are led to your new desk and abandoned. This is not a bad thing. Nobody expects you to do anything on your first day, anyway. In fact, any sort of first-day productivity will brand you with devil words such as “over-achiever” and “go-getter”, throwing a serious wrench in your future ability to achieve The Credo. So first things first – see what games are loaded on your computer.  Check its history and cache. If the IT department hasn’t wiped everything clean, this little foray will instantly alert you as to how much web surfing you can accomplish during the average work day. It’s always fun to open files entitled “PERSONAL”. I’ve yet to find anything good in one – a half finished Christmas list from 1995 is my biggest discovery to date, but I have high hopes that one of you can regale me with a scintillating tale from your own experiences.

I suppose you could utilize this time to familiarize yourself with paperwork in your file drawers, and stuff like that, but that would be stupid. It took a couple of different positions to figure this out, but I guarantee you that you’ll NEVER utilize ANYTHING that’s in those files. Ever. Make your life simpler and dump them all in the trash right now.  Besides, they belong to The Old Guy. When your boss snaps at you and asks why you didn’t use the Strissky Contract as a guideline, you can just shrug with upturned palms and say “The Strissky file didn’t have a contract in it. I had no idea we had a pre-existing agreement with them…”  Blink.  It was the Old Guy’s fault. 

This is great fun, but remember - at some point in time, you’ll be The Old Guy. If your position in the firm is high enough, your departure will be an excuse to pin every corporate snafu on since 1927. “Didn’t the first company president jump out a window during the Black Tuesday stock market crash?” “Yes, I think Mitzi was handling his investments.” “Warehousing! Why haven’t these widget orders been shipped?!?!?” “Well, two months ago, Mitzi told us to hold them until further notice, so we’ve just been sitting around and waiting…” It never ceases to amaze me how this unwritten policy is echoed in every company on the face of this earth.  We all know we’re doing it.  We all know The Old Guy isn’t really to blame for all these problems, and yet, his departure provides us with a golden Get Out of Jail Free card that we use with relish.

Your next crucial step is to assess your office supplies. This one simple act provides a shining beacon of understanding as to exactly what the next three months of your life will be like. Slowly pull out the skinny drawer and look at what Old Guy has left you. If there’s only a pencil with teeth marks and a pad with four Post-It Notes remaining, take a moment to put your head on your desk and cry. He was angry and disgruntled and the last few months of his employment were spent dodging responsibility and deadlines. You’ll be spending months digging out of his mess.

If there are medical supplies, again, be afraid. Once I opened the skinny drawer and found Advil, Bandaids, three straight razors, Ben-Gay and a four-year supply of toothpicks. Suffice it to say that six months later, I was sitting behind a new desk at a new company.

Sometimes the things I find in the skinny drawer give me stress. Two jobs ago, I found four of those nubby rubber finger-tip things – you know, the ones that help you leaf through reams of paper. I kept waiting for my job to produce a ream of paper to peruse, as I was excited about having the perfect tool for the challenge. Alas, this never happened. While I did amuse myself by drawing faces on the rubber tips and acting out great finger-puppet drama, I was never able to stop fretting that I was missing out on an important ream-producing responsibility.

Sometimes, when I’m about to be the Old Guy, I’ll mess with the future New Guy.  Once, I left tiny, folded notes taped to the sides of drawers that only someone actively utilizing the desk could find. These notes contained very exciting information, like “Trust NO ONE!”……  “Beware the Bathroom Cameras!”…….  “CEO Dodson likes it when you talk about Pandas”…..  Evidently it took the poor New Guy six months and a near bladder malfunction to actually screw up enough courage to ask someone about bathroom cameras. When he finally admitted where he’d gotten his info, he was treated to an entire-staff belly laugh, informing him of what a pranking minx Old Mitzi was.

To his benefit, I left him some pretty awesome UniBall pens and a full set of highlighters.