This is like a scene from some kind of zombie movie. I keep hearing things and jumping. Shadows move and the building shakes from time to time.
Yes, day 1 on the new job. No one to meet me here. No office, just a small dark cube. No phone, no monitor, no docking station. I didn’t even bother to bring a power supply for my laptop, but I was able to steal one from a conference room. Probably better put that back when I leave today.
Oh look, there is a woman over near the copy machine. Maybe I can ask her where to find an extra mouse.
I decide an attempt at conversation may be unwise, but before I can do anything she runs to and exit and down the stairs.
The drive over the bridge was fine. No traffic to speak of, but it turns out I live 6 miles from I-90! That makes my total trip 15 each way. Ugh! I have never had more than a 6 mile drive to work in my entire life.
I did not see any wildlife as I ran from my car to the building this morning.
What a strange way to start off a new job. I have cleaned up and archived 4 years worth of email. I have cleaned up and archived 4 years worth of documents that I had saved to my desktop. Who knew there was a picture of crab pizza from Maui underneath? Now I will do some mandatory online training and then start reading documents off some department SharePoint site. Good times!
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Now this next part is just going to be insufferable. I know this, but I have to get it off my chest.
The last week has been completely surreal. On Tuesday night my old teams threw me a going away party. This I knew about, but when I got to work that day it started to slowly creep into my brain that everyone seemed to be wearing Hawaiian shirts. Finally it dawned on me that this was some kind of tribute thing. I was floored. Even people I thought hated me had Hawaiian shirts on. Certainly people that I hate had Hawaiian shirts on.
The turnout at the party was big. We drank beer and people gave me all kinds of Eastside survival gifts like bug spray, compasses, bear traps, flashlights, and goofy things to put on my desk. If only they had known how tiny this new desk is. I only had two beers and the whole thing just got overwhelming. I started crying. People were coming up to me saying I was the best manager they ever had, and how I had change their lives, and how I had made it able to for them to afford to have kids, and how my name would be remembered in their households for years. Jesus Christ! After an hour I was basically in hysterics with the crying so I just told everyone that I needed to be the first to leave so that I would not be remembered at a big blubbering fool. I think I failed at that last point.
I honestly had no idea that anyone there even liked me. I was moderately fond of some of them part of the time.
The hardest part was saying goodbye to my Indian team. For three years these guys did major heroics for me. Nights, weekends, anything I asked. Sometimes we had our battles, but it was really more like fighting with your brothers and sisters. When I look back on this experience I will think of these people as my real team. Oh shit now I am crying again.
The Indians all came to be separately on Thursday and gave me really nice presents and told me how much they respected me and how much they learned from me and how much they hated the guy they worked for now. I loved the last part the best. The whole thing started making me ball like a little baby again and I had to go hide in the bathroom for a while and then I wore sunglasses the rest of the day.
What an absolutely wonderful way to leave a job. I guess I actually did a good job and people really cared about me. Given what I have been through in the work environment in the last 5 years this seems like an absolutely strange thing. I think I have written about this before – probably in that hard hitting mermaid exposé post that everyone asked me to take down. The whole cult of Starbucks culture – treating each other with respect and dignity – trying to motivate people by telling them what they do right – the touchy feely propaganda that I always believed in but never saw in practice -- I guess I really internalized it…and it works.
Note to self: keep doing what you have been doing.
OK, time to stop wallowing in my self aggrandizement. I have to do some work.
Why is there a chopped off bloody finger under my desk?
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