New queue! I mean job!
Jul. 4th, 2007 01:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
thebratqueenSo, finally a chance to sit down and tell y'all about the new job.
To begin with I am totally stealing a page from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
swmbo (and how's she doing anyway?) and naming my company fannishly. I'll spare you the entirely dorky process I went through to figure out which company name was best (brief example: "Dunder Mifflin? Nah, that was the old job. Wolfram & Hart? Too evil...") and tell you I settled on Primatech Paper. It works on so many levels, not the least of which is that it turns out the office is frikkin' drowning in the stuff. We don't make it, but we sure as hell use enough of it each day to wallpaper, as for example, THE WORLD. As someone who's trying to live her life in a way that will make Al Gore happy this does make me twitchy, but theoretically there's recycling so I shall try to stay calm.
Anyhoo, on with the details. Which shall go behind cut tags to save your flist in ways that we are not saving paper.
My new official title is administrative assistant to a guy at Primatech whose own job title starts with C and ends with O. I won't tell you which of many letter choices goes in the middle because again I am trying to be sneaky and thus keep posts public.
Of interesting note, I have a suspicion that when I applied for the job I got a bit of an upgrade. Basically they advertised for Administrative job A, but when I went in for the first of my thousand interviews they said they were actually looking for a few Admin Assistants due to recent company growth. At the time I took that as a somewhat hopeful sign b/c I figured if I didn't qualify for the job I applied for maybe there was another opening that I could fit into.
However the next steps were me talking with a VP and then with C*O guy, neither of whom are involved with the department of the job I applied for. And now that I'm on the job C*O guy seems to be leaning towards "Yeah, in theory you could be helping these other folks out but, uh, yeah not so much. MINE!"
So it's possible - though I'm only guessing - that maybe I impressed them enough that even though I applied for a regular assistant job they put me into an executive assistant job. Which isn't to say that I won't still help out with the overall team that I'm working with, just that primarily I'm here to work with C*O. I have my own little "directly reporting to" spot on the org chart and everything! :D [/geek]
But this also relates to my suspicions about mission creep between job description during interviews and job reality as it has appeared so far. Because early on in the interviews there seemed to be a bit of "We'll share you like a frat joint" aspect to things, and currently it looks more like "90% C*O, 10% everyone else."
But then again who knows? I've only been there for a day and a half. It's entirely possible they're holding off on giving me the rest of the stuff until I'm more in the groove.
Overall the company seems very nice. Everyone I've met has been friendly, and I know during the interview process that that's one of the things that they look for. They don't hire solely based on qualifications. They want you to be qualified and work well with everyone else. They're also into encouraging the relaxed and friendly atmosphere by doing things like buying everyone lunch on Mondays and having a couple of sports teams.
They're also into charity. For example, they have ongoing food drives and apparently give out rewards to the group as a whole based on participation. As you might imagine, this is a huge tonal shift from my previous job, where my boss didn't donate so much as a dollar to support me in my charity walk.
Another thing I like is that there's a lot of diversity. The company isn't huge, but there's quite a few cultural backgrounds represented as well as a lot of women. And not just in support staff positions like mine, so that's nice.
I could go on but you get the idea. I mean it's a hugely positive sign when pretty much everyone I talked to both during the interview process and after could not stop raving about how great the company atmosphere was, how great the benefits were, how nice a place Primatech was to work for, etc.
***
Day one started with me pretty much meeting EVERYONE. I am a dork so I tried to keep a cheat sheet of names and ways to remember people by, though my memory couldn't retain all the names by the time I got back to my cheat sheet to scribble on it.
I also took copious notes whenever anyone talked to me. I'm like that. It may turn out that I don't need the information later on, but when I'm new on a job I'd much rather err on the side of being hugely OCD with my note-taking than take the chance that later on I find out I was told something important and didn't even realize it.
The general lay of the job land was that I primarily support my boss, I work together with all the other folks on the admin. assistant team, and I do some stuff for my boss's team. Again this may shift as I learn more about the job and/or they dump more work on me.
The AA team is veddy nice, though, because we get things like a special perk as far as summer hours. Basically summer hours for everyone else are 2pm on Fridays. But AAs get to leave at noon. The tradeoff is that two of us have to stay until 5pm on Friday to cover for all the AAs who aren't there. And there's enough of us that you only have to stay late about twice a month.
Granted if your boss needs you to hang around you hang around, but it's little stuff like that which makes the job atmosphere a happy one.
My boss was in meetings for a good chunk of the morning, so it wasn't until later that he was able to sit down with me and talk about job stuff. Here's where OMGPANIC #1 was set in motion.
Some backstory:
My boss is a nice guy but he has almost no intonation in his speaking. Think Ben Stein only not as grating on the ears. I feel like you could give him a billion dollars or set him on fire and his voice would sound exactly the same.
In addition to that his mind can sometimes wander when he's talking. So if you ask him a question (as I did several times during all the interviews) he might start out trying to answer you, but then end up in some other area entirely. He seems to be aware of it though because after he's done talking he'll sometimes look at you and say "Did I get anywhere near your question?"
So combine all that with my utter n00b status and we get my first meeting with him. During which time he talks to me about a lot of stuff, and I take tons of notes, and he sometimes flat-out says "I need you to do X" and other times it's just me making logical conclusions that Y needs to be done based on what he's telling me. And as soon as our chat is done I immediately head off and do those things.
Fast forward a few hours later. He calls me into his office and asks "So what's the status on that ABC we talked about? Because I'd like to take whatever you've got into the meeting I've got in five minutes."
Cue me quietly freaking the fuck out. Because during the earlier chat ABC came up, it came up a billion times, and the only vaguely actionable item I can think of in relation to it would involve me making calls to dozens of people whose names I don't know, let alone their phone numbers. Also at no time was a 2pm deadline mentioned for anything. 2pm, in fact, did not come up at all.
So I do my best to act like I'm totally in control and on top of the situation while trying to ask what in the heck is he looking for, as it is my quiet hope that maybe it's one of the things I took care of that morning and he just doesn't realize it.
Long story short it turns out that at one point in the meeting he mentioned a format for reports and he wanted me to take some of the information about the ABC stuff and put it into a report using that format. I have no idea when this request was made. Possibly he made it and somehow I didn't hear it, possibly he only thinks he made it in the same way that he thinks he's answered questions when he's nowhere near that area. But either way you can imagine how the "ohshit" feeling of not only not having done the one thing your new boss is asking you for, combined with not even knowing that he's asked you for it, can make you feel like you are way, waaaaaaaaaay over your head.
To add on to my overwhelmed feelings, we had the way that the entire office speaks Corporate Speak. I haven't been in an office that was anywhere close to that language since I lived in Denver. So there were quite a few times when people would say something to me, or ask something of me, and I couldn't tell if they were using those words in the same way that I use them. I realize the way to fix this is to ask, and I did ask some questions because I know never doing so is both stupid and standoffish. But you hit a point where you feel like you'd be asking for every. single. THING that they're telling you, at which time you pass through "Eager to learn" and into "Why did we hire her?" land.
Which might be stupid of me to assume but remember we're talking about my wacky thought patterns, not logic.
On top of that is that I didn't eat enough for lunch. Yes, of the catered meal. Yes, I brought food with me. No, I didn't eat any of that. What can I tell you? I was a moron. So as the day wore on my body chemistry went more and more wacky, and thus contributed to me feeling weird and lightheaded and migrainey and out of sorts.
So combine all that together and by the time I got home all I wanted to do was crawl into a hole and stay there.
And that was day one.
***
Day two went a tiny bit better. I started out by deciding to take control of my cubicle. Step one was moving the computer around so that I didn't have to deal with the so-called 'ergonomic' keyboard setup that was giving me eyestrain and hints of carpal tunnel. (Both of which added to my feelings of "ohshit this job isn't going to work" during day 1)
Next on the list was making a better To Do list. Not that I didn't have one before, but I needed one that could be updated quickly and easily scanned for "OMGDONOW!!!" vs "Do when you're utterly bored and nothing else is pending."
With one day under my belt I came into day 2 feeling like I had a slightly better idea of the context for things that I was asked. Though OTOH my boss was in a lot of meetings, so who's to say that I wouldn't have been just as overwhelmed as yesterday if he'd been free enough to talk to me as he had been?
I also think I had a better idea of when/how to ask questions, not only of him but of others. Possibly this confidence was all in my head but hey, whatever works.
Some big things, though, were that I was able to get ahead of the curve not once but twice. Once was taking the initiative to go to him and say "Do you want me to send the XYZ email out now, since the office is closing early?" the other was him asking me to do something and me saying I'd already done it, and done it yesterday (and without being asked). So twice I was able to show that yes, I do have a brain in my head and can use it to not only get things done but to anticipate needs before they come up. Which I think helped to show that the issue with the report yesterday was an anomaly. (Again, possibly only in my mind as for all I know my boss has forgotten about that moment already, but right now regaining confidence in myself is a huge deal.)
Another help was realizing the differences between my old job and this one. I've semi-jokingly said that I feel like the old job was an abusive relationship and that I wouldn't really realize the impact it had on me until it was gone. I think some of that was in effect during day 1 as I was putting pressure on myself to do things in ways they didn't need to be done.
Mind you mistakes were still made. Such as me possibly emailing the wrong person, and my continued habit of not realizing which one of the many phone lines that are attached to my phone are ones I should pick up (it doesn't help when your boss sorta-kinda shares a name with another person, and so the phone rings, and you glance over, and you see a blinking light next to what you think is your boss's name, and... not so much.) But these are the sort of headdesky to be expected n00b mistakes. These aren't mistakes that make me feel like maybe I got hired for a job I'm not qualified for.
Which may kick my ass again come Thursday, since that's when my boss indicated we're going to have crunch time on a couple of things and said things are totally new to me, but this way I was able to catch my breath.
And on Day 2 I made sure to eat. Even though it was an early day, food was had. Which also helped. Whew.
***
I will say this: no matter what else, I will love this job for the phone. It's quiet. Not that it doesn't ring. It does. But it doesn't ring as constantly as the phone at my old job did, and when it does ring it rings softly. No more jarring noise ripping through my brain and totaly destroying my ability to think! Thank GOD.
Now if only I could figure out how to work it. See above re: me answering the wrong lines. *facepalm*
The final thing left to talk about is my cube. It is a nice cube, such as cubes go. Again I think it goes to show overall company tone that the cubes are in dark, woody shades instead of industrial grey.
However the person who had my cube before me was apparently insane. Near as I can figure about 10% of the cube is taken up with actual work-related items. The other 90% is the spare supply closet. And I'm not kidding. We're talking boxes upon boxes of file folders and dividers and binders and lions and tigers oh my. To the point at which I figured okay, this has to be part of my job description. Like maybe at some point my boss will ask me to put reports together and therefore I'll need, as for example, 50 free binders to put said reports in with some backup binders to spare.
But no. I asked. No such binder need, no such divider need, and the file folders wouldn't fit into my or my boss's drawers. Likewise nobody I talked to (and by day 2 I knew the folks to ask these questions - namely the other admin assistants) could tell me why the person who had the job before me was hoarding those things. They also, to a man, very diplomatically hinted that the person who came before me did not exactly follow earth logic in any way that they could tell, so while they hadn't known about the spare supply cabinet that she had created, neither did it surprise them.
So I finally had the ability to start to make my cube my own. As we don't have a mailroom/supply staff it all falls to me to do, and there is so much that it would probably take hours if I did that and nothing but. But OTOH I figure this will give me time to figure out what I need to store, why, and how I want to store it. So that way when all the space is clear I can have a smooth system to replace it with.
But I have gotten started. Yesterday I reclaimed a single drawer just so I could start using a stop-gap filing method to at least gain some control of the new paperwork coming in. I don't remember how much time it took to dig out the drawer, but I can tell you that in it was:
1) ARMFULS of binder dividers. (Which match the other armfuls to be found in at least two other drawers)
2) A wrist rest
3) A random wire
4) An old package of saltines
and, way down at the bottom:
5) A copy of The Da Vinci Code
At which point I cracked the hell up because how could you not?
I'm tempted to start making a shrine to the weird things I discover while I dig, but OTOH right now I don't have room for that, since I am not kidding about the lack of space.
Still, at least there's amusement to be had.
And that's all I can think of to mention for now. Ta da!
To begin with I am totally stealing a page from
swmbo (and how's she doing anyway?) and naming my company fannishly. I'll spare you the entirely dorky process I went through to figure out which company name was best (brief example: "Dunder Mifflin? Nah, that was the old job. Wolfram & Hart? Too evil...") and tell you I settled on Primatech Paper. It works on so many levels, not the least of which is that it turns out the office is frikkin' drowning in the stuff. We don't make it, but we sure as hell use enough of it each day to wallpaper, as for example, THE WORLD. As someone who's trying to live her life in a way that will make Al Gore happy this does make me twitchy, but theoretically there's recycling so I shall try to stay calm. Anyhoo, on with the details. Which shall go behind cut tags to save your flist in ways that we are not saving paper.
My new official title is administrative assistant to a guy at Primatech whose own job title starts with C and ends with O. I won't tell you which of many letter choices goes in the middle because again I am trying to be sneaky and thus keep posts public.
Of interesting note, I have a suspicion that when I applied for the job I got a bit of an upgrade. Basically they advertised for Administrative job A, but when I went in for the first of my thousand interviews they said they were actually looking for a few Admin Assistants due to recent company growth. At the time I took that as a somewhat hopeful sign b/c I figured if I didn't qualify for the job I applied for maybe there was another opening that I could fit into.
However the next steps were me talking with a VP and then with C*O guy, neither of whom are involved with the department of the job I applied for. And now that I'm on the job C*O guy seems to be leaning towards "Yeah, in theory you could be helping these other folks out but, uh, yeah not so much. MINE!"
So it's possible - though I'm only guessing - that maybe I impressed them enough that even though I applied for a regular assistant job they put me into an executive assistant job. Which isn't to say that I won't still help out with the overall team that I'm working with, just that primarily I'm here to work with C*O. I have my own little "directly reporting to" spot on the org chart and everything! :D [/geek]
But this also relates to my suspicions about mission creep between job description during interviews and job reality as it has appeared so far. Because early on in the interviews there seemed to be a bit of "We'll share you like a frat joint" aspect to things, and currently it looks more like "90% C*O, 10% everyone else."
But then again who knows? I've only been there for a day and a half. It's entirely possible they're holding off on giving me the rest of the stuff until I'm more in the groove.
Overall the company seems very nice. Everyone I've met has been friendly, and I know during the interview process that that's one of the things that they look for. They don't hire solely based on qualifications. They want you to be qualified and work well with everyone else. They're also into encouraging the relaxed and friendly atmosphere by doing things like buying everyone lunch on Mondays and having a couple of sports teams.
They're also into charity. For example, they have ongoing food drives and apparently give out rewards to the group as a whole based on participation. As you might imagine, this is a huge tonal shift from my previous job, where my boss didn't donate so much as a dollar to support me in my charity walk.
Another thing I like is that there's a lot of diversity. The company isn't huge, but there's quite a few cultural backgrounds represented as well as a lot of women. And not just in support staff positions like mine, so that's nice.
I could go on but you get the idea. I mean it's a hugely positive sign when pretty much everyone I talked to both during the interview process and after could not stop raving about how great the company atmosphere was, how great the benefits were, how nice a place Primatech was to work for, etc.
***
Day one started with me pretty much meeting EVERYONE. I am a dork so I tried to keep a cheat sheet of names and ways to remember people by, though my memory couldn't retain all the names by the time I got back to my cheat sheet to scribble on it.
I also took copious notes whenever anyone talked to me. I'm like that. It may turn out that I don't need the information later on, but when I'm new on a job I'd much rather err on the side of being hugely OCD with my note-taking than take the chance that later on I find out I was told something important and didn't even realize it.
The general lay of the job land was that I primarily support my boss, I work together with all the other folks on the admin. assistant team, and I do some stuff for my boss's team. Again this may shift as I learn more about the job and/or they dump more work on me.
The AA team is veddy nice, though, because we get things like a special perk as far as summer hours. Basically summer hours for everyone else are 2pm on Fridays. But AAs get to leave at noon. The tradeoff is that two of us have to stay until 5pm on Friday to cover for all the AAs who aren't there. And there's enough of us that you only have to stay late about twice a month.
Granted if your boss needs you to hang around you hang around, but it's little stuff like that which makes the job atmosphere a happy one.
My boss was in meetings for a good chunk of the morning, so it wasn't until later that he was able to sit down with me and talk about job stuff. Here's where OMGPANIC #1 was set in motion.
Some backstory:
My boss is a nice guy but he has almost no intonation in his speaking. Think Ben Stein only not as grating on the ears. I feel like you could give him a billion dollars or set him on fire and his voice would sound exactly the same.
In addition to that his mind can sometimes wander when he's talking. So if you ask him a question (as I did several times during all the interviews) he might start out trying to answer you, but then end up in some other area entirely. He seems to be aware of it though because after he's done talking he'll sometimes look at you and say "Did I get anywhere near your question?"
So combine all that with my utter n00b status and we get my first meeting with him. During which time he talks to me about a lot of stuff, and I take tons of notes, and he sometimes flat-out says "I need you to do X" and other times it's just me making logical conclusions that Y needs to be done based on what he's telling me. And as soon as our chat is done I immediately head off and do those things.
Fast forward a few hours later. He calls me into his office and asks "So what's the status on that ABC we talked about? Because I'd like to take whatever you've got into the meeting I've got in five minutes."
Cue me quietly freaking the fuck out. Because during the earlier chat ABC came up, it came up a billion times, and the only vaguely actionable item I can think of in relation to it would involve me making calls to dozens of people whose names I don't know, let alone their phone numbers. Also at no time was a 2pm deadline mentioned for anything. 2pm, in fact, did not come up at all.
So I do my best to act like I'm totally in control and on top of the situation while trying to ask what in the heck is he looking for, as it is my quiet hope that maybe it's one of the things I took care of that morning and he just doesn't realize it.
Long story short it turns out that at one point in the meeting he mentioned a format for reports and he wanted me to take some of the information about the ABC stuff and put it into a report using that format. I have no idea when this request was made. Possibly he made it and somehow I didn't hear it, possibly he only thinks he made it in the same way that he thinks he's answered questions when he's nowhere near that area. But either way you can imagine how the "ohshit" feeling of not only not having done the one thing your new boss is asking you for, combined with not even knowing that he's asked you for it, can make you feel like you are way, waaaaaaaaaay over your head.
To add on to my overwhelmed feelings, we had the way that the entire office speaks Corporate Speak. I haven't been in an office that was anywhere close to that language since I lived in Denver. So there were quite a few times when people would say something to me, or ask something of me, and I couldn't tell if they were using those words in the same way that I use them. I realize the way to fix this is to ask, and I did ask some questions because I know never doing so is both stupid and standoffish. But you hit a point where you feel like you'd be asking for every. single. THING that they're telling you, at which time you pass through "Eager to learn" and into "Why did we hire her?" land.
Which might be stupid of me to assume but remember we're talking about my wacky thought patterns, not logic.
On top of that is that I didn't eat enough for lunch. Yes, of the catered meal. Yes, I brought food with me. No, I didn't eat any of that. What can I tell you? I was a moron. So as the day wore on my body chemistry went more and more wacky, and thus contributed to me feeling weird and lightheaded and migrainey and out of sorts.
So combine all that together and by the time I got home all I wanted to do was crawl into a hole and stay there.
And that was day one.
***
Day two went a tiny bit better. I started out by deciding to take control of my cubicle. Step one was moving the computer around so that I didn't have to deal with the so-called 'ergonomic' keyboard setup that was giving me eyestrain and hints of carpal tunnel. (Both of which added to my feelings of "ohshit this job isn't going to work" during day 1)
Next on the list was making a better To Do list. Not that I didn't have one before, but I needed one that could be updated quickly and easily scanned for "OMGDONOW!!!" vs "Do when you're utterly bored and nothing else is pending."
With one day under my belt I came into day 2 feeling like I had a slightly better idea of the context for things that I was asked. Though OTOH my boss was in a lot of meetings, so who's to say that I wouldn't have been just as overwhelmed as yesterday if he'd been free enough to talk to me as he had been?
I also think I had a better idea of when/how to ask questions, not only of him but of others. Possibly this confidence was all in my head but hey, whatever works.
Some big things, though, were that I was able to get ahead of the curve not once but twice. Once was taking the initiative to go to him and say "Do you want me to send the XYZ email out now, since the office is closing early?" the other was him asking me to do something and me saying I'd already done it, and done it yesterday (and without being asked). So twice I was able to show that yes, I do have a brain in my head and can use it to not only get things done but to anticipate needs before they come up. Which I think helped to show that the issue with the report yesterday was an anomaly. (Again, possibly only in my mind as for all I know my boss has forgotten about that moment already, but right now regaining confidence in myself is a huge deal.)
Another help was realizing the differences between my old job and this one. I've semi-jokingly said that I feel like the old job was an abusive relationship and that I wouldn't really realize the impact it had on me until it was gone. I think some of that was in effect during day 1 as I was putting pressure on myself to do things in ways they didn't need to be done.
Mind you mistakes were still made. Such as me possibly emailing the wrong person, and my continued habit of not realizing which one of the many phone lines that are attached to my phone are ones I should pick up (it doesn't help when your boss sorta-kinda shares a name with another person, and so the phone rings, and you glance over, and you see a blinking light next to what you think is your boss's name, and... not so much.) But these are the sort of headdesky to be expected n00b mistakes. These aren't mistakes that make me feel like maybe I got hired for a job I'm not qualified for.
Which may kick my ass again come Thursday, since that's when my boss indicated we're going to have crunch time on a couple of things and said things are totally new to me, but this way I was able to catch my breath.
And on Day 2 I made sure to eat. Even though it was an early day, food was had. Which also helped. Whew.
***
I will say this: no matter what else, I will love this job for the phone. It's quiet. Not that it doesn't ring. It does. But it doesn't ring as constantly as the phone at my old job did, and when it does ring it rings softly. No more jarring noise ripping through my brain and totaly destroying my ability to think! Thank GOD.
Now if only I could figure out how to work it. See above re: me answering the wrong lines. *facepalm*
The final thing left to talk about is my cube. It is a nice cube, such as cubes go. Again I think it goes to show overall company tone that the cubes are in dark, woody shades instead of industrial grey.
However the person who had my cube before me was apparently insane. Near as I can figure about 10% of the cube is taken up with actual work-related items. The other 90% is the spare supply closet. And I'm not kidding. We're talking boxes upon boxes of file folders and dividers and binders and lions and tigers oh my. To the point at which I figured okay, this has to be part of my job description. Like maybe at some point my boss will ask me to put reports together and therefore I'll need, as for example, 50 free binders to put said reports in with some backup binders to spare.
But no. I asked. No such binder need, no such divider need, and the file folders wouldn't fit into my or my boss's drawers. Likewise nobody I talked to (and by day 2 I knew the folks to ask these questions - namely the other admin assistants) could tell me why the person who had the job before me was hoarding those things. They also, to a man, very diplomatically hinted that the person who came before me did not exactly follow earth logic in any way that they could tell, so while they hadn't known about the spare supply cabinet that she had created, neither did it surprise them.
So I finally had the ability to start to make my cube my own. As we don't have a mailroom/supply staff it all falls to me to do, and there is so much that it would probably take hours if I did that and nothing but. But OTOH I figure this will give me time to figure out what I need to store, why, and how I want to store it. So that way when all the space is clear I can have a smooth system to replace it with.
But I have gotten started. Yesterday I reclaimed a single drawer just so I could start using a stop-gap filing method to at least gain some control of the new paperwork coming in. I don't remember how much time it took to dig out the drawer, but I can tell you that in it was:
1) ARMFULS of binder dividers. (Which match the other armfuls to be found in at least two other drawers)
2) A wrist rest
3) A random wire
4) An old package of saltines
and, way down at the bottom:
5) A copy of The Da Vinci Code
At which point I cracked the hell up because how could you not?
I'm tempted to start making a shrine to the weird things I discover while I dig, but OTOH right now I don't have room for that, since I am not kidding about the lack of space.
Still, at least there's amusement to be had.
And that's all I can think of to mention for now. Ta da!
