The Aerie
Yesterday's First Day of Work went quite well, thank you. Alberti's Axiom was borne out quite thoroughly: "A pessimist is never disappointed, and only pleasantly surprised." In this case, my mood regarding the job was so dour, the simple fact that the building didn't burn down on my first day was enough to cheer me up.
And they did better than that. Their "onboarding" process was well organized, and I quickly had all the information I needed to get work done. In fact by about noon I had everything except my voicemail working. And by the end of the day I actually attended a meeting and got real work done. My first day!
But the best part of the day were the valuable parting gifts left for me by the former occupant of my cube.
The first gift was the mess: I spent a considerable period of time just scrubbing coffee and food stains off of most surfaces. I wondered as I did so how one could sterilize a keyboard. Here I was scrubbing coffee stains off a shelf in the cabinet (I kid you not), and yet I all-too-eagerly set my fingers to the keyboard without considering what was on those keycaps.
Yes, the cube has a cabinet. Actually it's quite a nice cubicle. It doesn't have a window like my last cube, but then neither am I sharing it with a silent Indian immigrant, nor is it next to a loudmouth Brooklyn bully, and it's not stalked by a manager looking for an excuse to can me.
It's an aisle cube, meaning that one wall is solid and five feet high. The hallway noise or slightly smaller size could be annoying, except that it means the cabinet is moved to the end of my desk, which in turns offers me a quiet nook into which to place my own laptop. I can't put it on the company network, but at least I can listen to music on it or access my own files.
Anyway, I got the cube cleaned, and in so doing I found a lot of stuff left behind by the prior occupant of the cube. First, a nice black coffee mug, unadorned. I cleaned it and used the microwave to boil some water in it and it serves quite well.
Second, a mostly-full box of Lipton's Green Tea. The coffee situation is not terrific here - you basically have to walk a quarter mile and pay a dollar for each cup. So I suspect I'll be taking up tea again, as I haven't the funds or patience for all that.
And third and best... well...
So I'm sitting there during one of the "onboarding" briefings, and I spot this small green light underneath the desk. "Funny," I say to myself (losing track of what the HR person is telling me), that is just like my laptop power supply. I haven't yet taken out my laptop at this point, so I know it's not mine, and I forget about it during the rest of the briefing.
A couple hours later I'm getting the desk cleaned, and I spot the light again. So I lean under the desk and pick it up. A power supply. I turn it over. Sony. I pull out my laptop and look at the requirements: 16 volts. I look at the power supply: 16 volts. I take the plug from the power supply... and it plugs into my laptop.
WTF? What are the chances? This is a $50 power supply, and I find it under my desk. I could have been placed at any of 10,000 desks in this place. I could have found any of 10,000 power supplies uner my desk. But I find the one desk with the one power supply that happens to fit my laptop? The mind boggles.
So: tea, teacup, power supply. My prior occupant left me some valuable parting gifts when he or she left the building.
Today I'm back at work early, trying to recoup some of the hours lost to the President's Day holiday. I ran into one former colleague, and he informed me that another is working here as well.
Of course, that former colleague used to be my manager, and while we got along just fine at that workplace, after the last experience re-encountering a former manager - where I ended up losing my contract? - I'm a little shy to re-introduce myself! But no, he's not managing me here, he's just a coworker, so I expect things shall be fine.
Anyway, back to work...
Posted by Albatross at February 21, 2007 8:29 AM | TrackBack