Work: What's Old and What's New

So, I've had my first (abbreviated) week at work, which means I am now an expert and can start writing blog posts about it. Thought I'd start with the things that don't ever seem to change and then talk about the new and different stuff. Here you go:

What's Old

1. Computers and printers hate each other, would much rather not talk to each other ever, and take it out on me (I guess because I'm always trying to get them to get along). This means that I could work for any company in the world and still have days like today, in which, instead of getting any real work done, I spend six hours trying to hook up a printer/fax machine that still isn't working properly, and I am doomed always to have to resort to "work-around" solutions.

2. The people who work in IT at every company are absolute saints. This week, I met St. Skip (who is already sick of me and how ditzy and inept I am, I'm sure). St. Skip had the presence of mind to tell me that it's good to be a Luddite. We spent so much time on the phone chatting today (yes, I was chatting on the phone. See how desperate I was?) while waiting for things to load and unload that I feel like we've known each other for years (it helps that he's from Philly, although living in California now, and actually knows this area).

3. People who can't string two coherent sentences together will always think they have a great idea for a book and want someone to publish it. Most likely, they will approach a completely inappropriate publishing company (say, an academic publishing company when they've got a memoir all about the time they were abducted by aliens who took them on a roller coaster ride to their galaxy).

4. I will always think there are enough hours in the day to accomplish the twelve things I have on my to-do list, will always forget that I might have to spend 3 hours chatting with St. Skip or the author who was abducted by aliens, and will always get to the end of the day despairing that only three things have been crossed off the to-do list. (Even when I have promised, promised, promised myself that with this job things are going to be different.)

5. Every day, some email will appear in my box that might as well have been written in Chinese for all that I can understand it. Usually, it has something to do with systems and is chock-full of acronyms.

What's New:

1. A company that is truly set up for telecommuting. What? You've sent me a phone? And that phone plugs into my wireless router? And now people call me on a number with a California area code, and I never see the bill, and I never have to remember to submit said bill for reimbursement in a timely fashion to avoid having accounting people screaming for my head on a platter? How cool is that???

2. I am promptly addressing all emails, keeping them sorted and organized, immediately deleting what can be deleted, and will never again have five billion email messages hanging around with nowhere to go and no time to organize them (although I might get a wee bit behind on days that I spend urging computers and printers to get along with each other).

3. A user-friendly, intuitive, company computer system. Really. I'm supposed to get some training on it, and I suppose I will, but I've already been playing around with it and have figured out quite a lot, because it's well-designed and makes sense.

4. Already knowing so many people on my first day of the job (lots of colleagues from the company I worked prior to my last job now work for this company). It was so nice to log into my email on that first day and to have so many people welcoming me back and telling me they'd missed me.

5. Feeling like I can't wait to get to work every morning, and that what? This is a weekend? And I have to wait till Monday to contact people and pursue all these thousands of ideas I have? (Okay, this feeling won't last, I am sure, but right now, I am loving the job and am full of ideas of things I want to do.)