Monday, October 11, 2010

Like the first day of school

So I've finished my 2-year stint downtown and return to the "mothership" (as one of my erstwhile colleagues joked) tomorrow, starting in a new office. I know there's at least one person there I've met before (we were in the same office over 20 yrs ago!) and there may be others, but until tomorrow I won't know for sure. I've done this changing offices thing repeatedly over a 30-year career, so there's just the faintest touch of the "will they like me? will I be able to open my locker?" nerves.

Mostly I'm looking forward to the new challenges. The learning curve will be straight up initially because I'll have so many different things to get read up on, but that variety will keep me happy and engaged far longer than if this office worked only one or two things. They also get a lot of new people rotating through on assorted in-house "apprenticeship" programs, so I'll get to do a bit of mentoring, as well as learning from them and enjoying their energy and enthusiasm.

Tomorrow will probably be devoted to things like finding where my desk is, whether there's an office coffee mess or snack fund, how big the office fridge is, getting something with everyone's names so I can start learning who's who, and taking care of such administrivia as making sure Payroll and HR have my new info. With luck, I'll even get a little actual work done, if only to get added to their database so I can start reading up on their projects.

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