April 12, 2012 - First Day of Work

The first day of work and you are worked up. You're sweaty, hands a bit shaky. You meant to get a good night of sleep but excitement and predicted failure has your nerves jumping around like Mexican beans keeping you up until the wee hours of the morning.

Board the bus, then the metro, switch metro trains, all in a new city. Looking for signs to direct you, meanwhile you are hot, but it's chilly, and the wind is brisk. Forgotten sunglasses rest on your dresser as the morning sun blinds your peripherals, searching for the most direct walking route to the office door.

Cubicles. Which one is yours? I hope it is the one with the yellow stain on the back wall. Searching, guessing, waiting, the fucking electric chord does not work. Where is IT? Why are there only three people in the office right now? How many people work here and what the hell do they look like. You are frantic thinking that they will turn out to be a group of dinosaurs looking folks in the casino scene in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. So far, normal, you exhale in relief.

Coffee, this is cup three, but the slightly autistic guy who comes in at 6am invited you into the kitchen area for the grand tour. You feel obliged to pour another cup of what not feels due to the color like gun powder and cocaine. The tour continues and it is grand. "Here's where the people who make more money than you sit, and here is where you sit. Bathroom down the hall, you'll need a card to get in and out."

Card to get in an out of the bathroom? So if I forget that goddamn card one day, I do what? Post up in the second stall and just hope someone has to take a shit? #prayingforShit

Tour is over, employees start coming in. They are jovial, after all it is Thursday and a three-day weekend is in the forecast. I shake hands like I am Mitt Romney, making eye contact and trying to establish a presence with a lower than average tonality in my voice. I sound like a fucking idiot. I know that I have a lot of tasks to accomplish throughout the day but I am doing absolutely nothing. Who picks up the slack while I am being trained? Do things just not get done?

Questions emanating our of my pours like sweat in a tennis match, all unanswered. I feel a bit itchy so I just start a word document on my personal computer called Notes - April 12. I start to think about how much easier it is to work in the same job for your entire life and never have to go through this. Then I realize that if I did do that, "my entire life" would not be very long since I would likely put on and Andrew WK song one day at work and put a magnun to my head. Monotony could serious kill a man, as well as monogamy, but that would be more than 5 standard deviations from the current topic.

My boss arrives, I start training, the shock is over. The following day comes and at 4:30 I am having a beer on the patio talking about music venues in Boston. How long will it take me to get bored here?