Sigh.
Life is cruel sometimes (I think I need a tax break to perk me up, luckily the Budget is tomorrow night).
I guess I could always just console myself with the fact that I will soon be entering that ‘grace period’ which exists between the time you leave behind all your work-related problems and problem colleagues, and the time it takes at the ‘new place’ to realise where all your new problems lie and who all the new problem colleagues are.
In some ways this move comes not a moment too soon. An organisation-wide email circulated this morning warning of an impending ban on access to web-based email services.
What's worse is that the IT-chieftans recently banned access to both the official Big Brother website and the even more diverting Behind Big Brother.
What’s the point of clawing one's way up through to the ranks and attaining sufficient seniority to have an office if you can’t use it to hide an addiction to non work-related internetting?!
I’m just waiting for them to look at the web-page viewing stats and work out the number of productivity-sapping hours wasted on blogspot addresses ‘round this place.
I am a bit concerned though that the ‘new place’ has a reputation for having a savagely horrible work/life imbalance (in this instance, please equate ‘life’ with ‘sneaking in a blog post here and there during the week’). And nothing is more important to me these days than sharing my thoughts on Shane Warne’s undies and Camilla’s daily ferality quotient.
So in the event the posts start to look a bit stale - fairly warned be thee, says I.
Anyway, my thoughts now turn to the frightening prospect of a new workplace and all the terribly and fatally embarrassing things I could do on my first day or during my first week to seriously limit my career.
Just going off my previous experiences these may include:
1) Mistakenly sending my boss an email in which I complain about said boss (‘sposed to go to a colleague with the same first name as the boss – but that didn’t seem to make the boss feel any better about the situation, the sook);
2) Not showing up at all for my first shift (apparently I was supposed the check the roster or something);
3) Meeting the boss (from number 1, above) in the car park on the morning of my first day, not realising she was my boss, and telling her I had to rush off because “it is my first day today”;
4) After hearing about a boss’s diet ambitions, mentioning (to his face) at morning tea that he probably shouldn’t have that second lamington; and
5) Complaining about the rude and uppity attitude of the receptionist/admin staff before realising that, as a rule, these are the class of people in any office who possess large amounts of power and carry an annoyingly large amount of influence.
Got any of your own? Please post them. I’m not sure I’m quite worrying about this new job enough and the more scenarios to dread, the better.
9 comments:
Losing a website after accidentally dragging half of it into another directory so all the links broke and no one could figure out where the files had gone. Does this count?
Here's the classic I managed to do: get an email from a major institution, forward it with a sarcastic comment to a friend and realise that instead of 'forward' you'd hit the 'reply' button. When you get the angry email from the orginal sender, you send back the reply as an 'out-of-office' holiday message and hope the problem goes away...
(I guess the litmus test of whether you're addicted to blogging is when they ban it at work and you get broadband at home :) )
I wrote an email to a client advising them that the solicitor from the other side was an arrogant so-and-so and that although we would have to settle, I was minded to make it difficult because we would be dealing with said arrogant solcitor in the future and didn't want him to think that we were easy to push around.
Of course, I then sent it to the solicitor in question by mistake...
I never had to face the music though, because I immediately sent another email stating that the first one was intended for my client and covered by solicitor-client privilege (making it an offense for him to read it).
Since I work from home (now), I am starting to think that I should ban blogspot from my workplace in order to get my work done.
Maybe I will just impose a block out period during the middle of the day or something...
I can comment on Blogspot but I can't post... Be warned!
The worst thing that happened on my first day was when I started in a law firm (not as a lawyer, in the library) and my direct boss told me skirt was 'lovely' and she definitely preferred her staff to dress in skirts. It was also preferable - she said - to address anyone from senior associate up as 'Mr'. You might ask about the women too, but that was less relevant apparently. I went to the toilets and burst into tears and didn't stop crying for the next 18 months until I left.
Good pay, but.
Actually, that was the second worst thing.
The worst thing was when I got a fairly senior job in a big institution and not one single person would look at or speak to me unless I asked them a direct question. I had never worked there before and didn't know anyone, so I couldn't imagine what I had done wrong. After two days, this one person broke ranks to say 'this isn't personal, but we wanted whatshername to be given the job and we really hate the managers of this department and nothing you can do will make us like you'.
Tears again.
There was that time I told the boss that the tie that his daughter had bought him looked like it had been bought in the bargain bin at Vinnies. But that wasn't on a first day - does it still count?
My (ex)bf once commented loudly on the fat arse of a guy in front of us in the supermarket.
I looked and it was my new boss.
I'm pretty sure he miraculously didn't hear, but I was pretty worried for a while.
ps. CSH - can't find your email, so mail me and lemme know what your new job is.
I’m just waiting for them to look at the web-page viewing stats and work out the number of productivity-sapping hours wasted on blogspot addresses ‘round this place.
Sssshhh!
Jeez! Wanna give 'em ideas?!
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