First Day at Pensions

Well, I've worked my first day at my new job. Although gluing two dozen envelopes and covering reception for an hour hardly constitutes work! Granted, the person who's supposed to train me for scanning wasn't in today. And the person who started training me for clerical support wasn't in last week, so she had some serious catching up to do this morning. She couldn't train me until after lunch.

So the morning was pretty slim in the old work department. I read through the step-by-step guide for the scanning program I'll be using, then I read through the bio for the provincial finance minister, since he's technically my boss and that was the only other thing on my desk.

I got introduced to everyone and taken on a tour of the office, which is very nicely situated. Very mod colors, well-designed cubicles, each with their own little locker and everything. After a year-and-a-half of shared workspace with a five-member team, it will be so nice to personalize my desk!

I was preparing myself for that wiped-out cranky feeling I usually get when I have to stretch my brain out of its normal patterns. Two jobs ago, my learning curve was like mountaineering. It was my second office job outside of retail and I found myself doing reconcilliations, generating legal documents and overseeing disbursements and deposits. All without a solid hold on Windows XP.

Then my last job at the registry of deeds had a three-week physical conditioning element where my eyes had to adjust to taking visual snapshots of 3600 PC screen images per day. Plus the learning curve of making quality control decisions for all of those images. The whole team felt like our synapses were going to explode by the end of the day when we first started.

So that's what I was gearing up for when I showed up at Pensions for my first day. Luckily I always carry my writing around with me. I got quite a bit of my own work done this morning. I wonder if that's the shape of things to come?