First Impressions

Is it a good idea to write your first blog post about your brand-new job while you're PMSing your balls off?

Let's find out!

Actually, overall my impressions are very favorable. Everyone seems nice. More to the point, everyone seems normal.

And indeed there is a certain glamour to the job. "We'll put your photo on our section's web page," my new boss told me this morning, "so the remote offices you support have a face to put with the name."

"Oookaaay," I said slowly, glancing at my ID badge. "I hope they don't mind squished people with terminal jaundice."

"No no," she said, "the staff photographer will take it."

So here I am, first hour of the first day at the new job, standing outside in the sunshine, leaning casually on a brick pillar, hands clasped, smiling fetchingly while the breeze lifts my hair and a professional photographer shouts "Good, very nice!" at me.

Not long after, an email appointment went out for tomorrow morning, to the whole division. They need to take a new group photo and have been holding off until my arrival.

Okay, in my old office, there is a group photo hanging up in the kitchen area. I'm sure some of the people pictured are now dead, and of those, several don't even work there anymore. The live ones, meanwhile, have aged noticeably, or at least matured - one of my former coworkers, always stylish and dapper, sports a mullet in the group photo.

A slightly more recent photo is taped to the Sheriff's office door (and no, it is not riddled with dart holes) but it still features many people who have been gone for more than a couple of years.

I think it will be fine, once I settle in, once I get familiar with the way things are run, once the homesickness wears off. My cube is nicer and I have a real phone. The people seem really cool. The magnetic letters have met with universal approval.

As for the PMS, well, I'm on my own.