Welcome to Your New Job

The first few weeks at a new job are never easy. You’re trying to learn your way around, remember everyone’s names, get a feel for the office culture and figure out exactly what’s expected of you all at the same time. Add being pregnant on top of that and you’ve got one exhausted person on your hands.

I also have the pleasure of having a new boss that is somewhat of a disorganized mess and I’m quickly learning that if I want to get trained in how to do things, I’m going to have to figure them out myself. I figure it’s because she’s been doing her job for 14 years now and she forgets that I don’t just know things the way she does, which is understandable, but it can definitely cause problems. Take for example this recent conversation:

Boss: Stacy, can you put this away in that black box in the U.C.?
Me: Uh, sure… what’s the U.C.?
Boss: You know, that place we were in yesterday.
Me: Which place? One of the meeting rooms?
Boss: No, the place with the black box.
Me: What black box? I don’t think you’ve shown me that yet.
Boss: Well, you can’t miss it when you get to the U.C. Gotta run to a meeting. See you in a few hours!

Okay, not the most productive conversation of my life, to be sure. What the heck was she talking about? It took me an hour of discreetly asking around to figure out that the U.C. is actually the cafeteria, but because it only has vending machines, some people call it the “Useless Café” or U.C. Once I got there and found the mysterious black box, I realized that I needed a key to get into the darn thing, which my Boss of course had forgotten to give me. Why do I have this feeling this is something I should get used to?

But wait, it only gets better….

Today, when my boss couldn’t get an LCD projector to work correctly during a meeting, she burst into tears and ran to her office while yelling obscenities (yes - OBSCENTIES!) down the hallway, and then began hyperventilating. Very professional, don’t you think? To be honest, I was afraid to ask anyone if this happens often. I’m not sure I really want to know.

Sighhhhh, new jobs are SO much fun.