Friday, April 05, 2013

Workin' girl

Yay! The first (4-day) week of work is done! I am soooo tired. Lucky I came home to cat vomit on my bed to help relax me...

The work

So far, I've only been shown how to do one thing. Which I have done over and over and over again in the past 4 days. Hundreds of times. As you can imagine, this is not very exciting. On the other hand, I have been praised for working quickly and accurately, so yay for me. That bodes well for successful completion of the 2-week trial period. I hope next week they show me how to do more stuff, because it's probably not great to already be super bored after less than one whole week of work :( Honestly, not to be ultra-negative, but there have been many times this week where I've thought "I have a Master's degree in THIS?!?" It is literally: scan barcode, check the PDF looks ok, tick a couple of boxes, add a name and date, change a couple of drop-down menu options, scan next barcode...

I have my own barcode scanner and printer though! #everygirl'sdream

The colleagues

We have The Boss, let's call him Michel (I will probably forget these names later). He's quite good looking but is in a different office, so I don't see much of him. On the first day I had to sign a confidentiality agreement and he goes "oh, you just write your name? You don't have a real signature?" (with accompanying scribbly motion). Yes, fine, I have a child's signature, thanks for pointing that out. I think I got my first bank card at about 13, and after a while you're pretty much locked in to your signature, unless you change your name. Not only is it unsophisticated, it's also really *long* having to sign my full name. I get a cramp if I have to sign more than one document at a time! And it never fits in boxes on forms. But anyway, I read once that a legible signature is more fraud-proof than a scrawl, so suck on that, Mr. Grown-Up Signature. Other than hitting a signature sore spot, though, he seems very nice!

Moving on, in my office there are two women and a guy, all around about my age. Honestly though, I feel like I come from another planet than these women. They are both married with a toddler and building/renovating their first homes, and 80% of the conversation (and there is a LOT of talking going on) revolves around that. Especially the kids. If you want to hear the entire plot of a children's book recounted in great detail, or see a demo of a 2 year old's poo face, come work with me. It's pretty painful.

In between the insufferable kid-chatter, however, they are nice people - friendly, patient if I make French mistakes and interested in learning more about me and my culture, which is all good. I feel already like I've known them for more than a week, probably because of all the talking!

The office man, on the other hand, seems to see me as a kindred spirit. This manifests itself in rolled eyes when the other two are going on about stuff and questions as to how I'm putting up with the girls when they are not in the room. It's nice that he thinks we're on the same wavelength (and I do probably have more in common with him, from the bits of conversation we've had thus far), but I am a bit nervous of being lured into bitching about the other two every time they turn their backs! (Please note this, everyone who thinks men never gossip or bitch.) Besides, they are actually nice people, even if I find anecdotes about children a colossal bore. He's also a bit of a mumbler (pot calling the kettle black there) which means I generally have to ask him to say everything twice. Sometimes three times.

Adapting

As I said, I have been exhausted this week! I feel like I'm 50 years old, and/or have been doing manual labour all day, rather than a 30 year-old sitting in a chair. (I really do despair for what I'll be like when I'm old...) However, so far waking up in the morning hasn't been too difficult. Whether this is due to early, exhausted bedtimes or the Sleep Cycle app I bought (it monitors how heavily you're sleeping according to how much you're moving around and then it wakes you up up to 30 minutes before your alarm time, when you are in a light sleep phase) I don't know. Although I've been tired, I've run errands every day this week after work, whereas there have been plenty of times in the past year I've been unable to bring myself to do one thing in a day despite having all the time in the world. So that's good.

Hopefully next week I'll be less tired and I will be given more interesting things to do! I don't think anything will change on the King Biscuit Kid Chat Hour, so will just have to learn to live with that one! And now for some post-work wine :)

16 comments:

  1. Sounds like a solid start :) This is equally a response you could say to one of the mothers making her child's poo face.

    If I ever get a job again however, I will bear these comments in mind and curtail my Toddler Chat in mixed office company.

    I'm glad they are a friendly bunch and hope it gets a little more challenging for you.

    Love Ruth

    P.S. I am also an unsophisticat when it comes to my signature - I think scribbles look ridiculous.

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    1. Ha ha, good call with the solid start. Yes, some Toddler Chat is normal, but I seriously wonder what these women talked about before!! Ah, and you had the chance to pick a brand new signature and everything, interesting... I think I would at least shorten mine if I had the chance. Xx

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  2. Well for your sake I hope it gets more interesting. Nothing worse than eight hours of monotonous work. Still they seem ok so far. I am sure you will charm them!! ...... It bodes well that they have TIME to talk. Where I work conversation is limited to rushed breaks, due to the pressure of work.... Interesting working out the office politics!

    As to the signature thing. In my job we have to date time, sign and then PRINT our name, after everything we write, which is every few minutes. Unfortunately i have double barrelled name so this is such a pain, so my signature, like everyone else's, has become a squiggle and in fact I have a stamp instead of printing my name every time. This is Ok at work, but the squiggle, which now goes on official documents,( without the stamp) gets some funny looks and . makes it look like I am illiterate!

    Must try that sleep cycle app.

    Love Denise

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    1. Me too! It is quite busy, but the nature of the work means you can talk to an extent at the same time (although it is very easy to make mistakes if you don't pay attention, because it's very detail-orientated). I much prefer being busy than having nothing to do though, so that's good!

      Ha, good to know there's another side to the coin with the signature! I envy you your stamp, although all that signing does sound like a pain!

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  3. So Denise is really "Den-ise" or perhaps "De-nise" eh?
    Also came upstairs to cat vomit the other night. It must be something about your cats! Still I must say that I enjoyed strangling the mutant, (I presume thats what you meant by it being enjoyable).

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    1. Took me while to get that you were referring to the double-barrelled name! Ugh, I know, I already heard about the NZ vomiting.

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  4. I hope your work gets more interesting (I'm sure it will!), and I'm glad to hear that your first week went well!

    What is this app that you're using? Let me know if it continues to work. I think I might need something like that!

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    1. Thanks, at least when I learn more things there will be variety. Plus I usually enjoy indexing stuff (cos I'm lame), so hopefully that will be good.

      It's just called Sleep Cycle http://www.sleepcycle.com/ Will keep you updated - I think it cost me 0.90€ so not a big investment anyway!

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  5. Happy First Week of work!!!! The first week is always so exhausting, isn't it?

    I forget the pseudonyms I give people on my blog all the time and have to read back posts to remember their "cast and crew" names! It's funny you pointed it out.

    How uncomfortable that Office Man is luring you into office gossip. It's like 'let me discover who is annoying on my own, svp!' I had that happen to me at the tax office. The other girls wanted me to gossip about a co-worker who is actually a good friend of mine now and who is making our wedding cupcakes! Just smile, nod, and feign shock every so often. That should get you through it. It's funny that it's coming from a dude though...haha.

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    1. I forgot to even give the other ones pseudonyms, haha.

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  6. Congrats on surviving the first week! Hopefully things will get more interesting from now on out...

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    1. I have been quasi-introduced to something quite confusing I'll be primarily in charge of, but otherwise not yet!

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  7. Since I'm late to the party, I guess that today is the start of your second week at work. I hope that it's going well and you're back to feeling like your 30 year old self!

    The next time that your colleagues start talking about their offspring, maybe you should tell them a couple of Bob stories without mentioning that he's a cat. I would love to see their faces when you tell them about how he used to pee on the floor.

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    1. Ha, I remember that caught you out! Not quite so tired this week so far :)

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  8. Congrats on surviving the first week, scanning barcodes repeatedly, and cat vomit! And also, big thank you because I've now realized that my signature is probably ridiculously easy to forge. I'm going to spend the day figuring out if I can transition it into something that's not :)
    P.S. I hope this week has less toddler chatter for you. I detest non-stop toddler chatter.

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    1. Whoops, sorry to diss your signature! There is still quite a lot of toddler chat!

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