ninanevermore

One problem about working at a new job is that it’s kind of hard to goof off in the first few weeks, what with all the training and people always checking in to see how you’re doing. Blogging in a new work place can be downright impossible.

I’m still getting a feel for the new environment, though I’ve kind of fallen in love with the commute. The traffic is relatively light out this way. I’m not used to that. No relationship is perfect, though, and I do have a couple of complaints about the drive. For one, I almost feel cheated about not being able to listen to National Public Radio or my iPod the way I used to.

My other problem is that, with the lighter traffic I don’t spend the time idling at stoplights the way I used to, and instead of putting my make up on at the stoplights I have to finish (or sometimes start and finish) in my parking space when I get to work. Oh, sure, I have stoplights, but I don’t have to stop at all of them. A lot of them are green and I get to drive right through them. The others are so short that there’s no time to primp at them. This is taking some getting used to. Still, I do love the commute. It may even be worth the (rather large) cut in pay.

Taking a lunch every day is another new and strange phenomenon. Leaving the office for a whole hour and getting out into the sunshine is really kind of nice. I could brown bag it and eat at my desk, but I’ve had enough of that to last a life time. Besides, inevitably it leads to crumbs in your keyboard, and that’s just unsanitary. I know this from experience, and no matter how many times you flip your keyboard over and bang it on the desk to de-crumb it, it will still be crumby and get more crumby.

Leaving at 5 PM is heaven. Just getting up and going home. It’s amazing. I don’t know what to do with myself. There will be some late nights, I’ve been told, but only once in awhile. And I was promised no 12 hour days like was asked when I helped with the sales training at my old job. My ex-boss was kind of manic, and he never understood that after a 12 hour day, the last thing you wanted was to eat dinner with the people you’d just spent the whole day with and eaten your other 2 meals with. “Oh, come on!” he’d say in him manic hyperactive way, “Let me buy you all dinner! My treat!” He was a salesman by trade and every sentence he spoke ended with an exclamation point. I loathe exclamation points and always have. The only time anyone used one in my house was when they were angry with you, and so I never learned to really bond with that piece of punctuation.

I think a lot of my problems with my old boss had to do with those exclamation points. He used them so much that I had a hard time not thinking of him as a complete ninny. It could be a cultural thing. He is of Italian ancestry, and Italians use a lot of exclamation points when they communicate. Whether they are speaking or typing, every sentence that is not a question ends in an exclamation point. For Italians, emotions are like faces: they are the first thing one shows to everyone you meet.

My own ancestry is mostly Scandinavian, and we don’t use them so much. For us, emotions are like underwear: we have to be close to someone – perhaps married to them – in order to show off our emotions. Even then, for most of the day they are covered up and you just trust the other person to know they are there in place, doing their job out of sight from the world. For my people, the only sentences that end with an exclamation point are ones like, “Oh, for crying out loud, calm down!” We say this a lot, for example, when we are dealing with Italians.

So, far, so good. It’s been a week with few exclamation points in it, and that’s a good week by me. We’ll see how the next one goes.

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