176 Monday Musings: First Jobs
First jobs are always special. They linger on forever. You remember them for a variety of reasons.
You remember them for not knowing the head or tail of what you have to do. You remember them for the long hours of instructions and endless days of meaningless information overload, euphemistically called induction training. Since no one department can handle fresh nincompoops for a very long time, hence they would shuttle you from one department to another in the name of rotational training, so that by the time the first year is complete everyone knows how utterly useless you and your education is for the real world and from your side you become completely disillusioned by the way the corporate world works.
For every query, a manual, a section, a sub section and a policy is thrown at you. There is a travel policy which tells you that the kind of hotel that you would want to live in is always beyond your band and that all local travels must have details of where you went and with whom, which often is something you are not willing to divulge. For example why would you tell them that you took the afternoon off and went to have beer with freshers like you and indulge in competitive bitching about whose job sucks the most. There is a leave policy that you need to memorize even though leaves don't apply to newbies like you. There is promotion policy that you are shown as a tantalizing carrot, but which is something you are not even allowed to imagine for the next three years.
First job is remembered for endless trips to the printer, photocopier, the printing press and any other clerk job that all seniors did when they were freshers, but now want you to do it, positioned to you as learning the basics, but in reality nothing less than revenge. You often stay till the last because everyone believes, because you are a fresher you do do not have a life, not at least a social one. They believe, like normal human beings, you do not feel hungry or feel the need to sleep every once in a while. They also believe that dumping more work just when you are about to leave for the day at 10 in the night is preparing you for larger things to come. First job teaches you the virtues of smiling at gross stupidity, tolerating lack of logic and finally warming up to the idea that the longer people have been here the more skeletons they have to hide. You learn more about the office politics. cliques, coteries, cabals and history from the guard, pantry boy the housekeeping staff and the lowly support staff, something the HR department inadvertently forgot to mention in their induction.
The good news is that everyone remembers his first job, at least the normal ones do. The bad news is only a few remember who they were and how they were then. Considering what they end up becoming, its a good thing to remember. Check it out!
Guru
First jobs are always special. They linger on forever. You remember them for a variety of reasons.
You remember them for not knowing the head or tail of what you have to do. You remember them for the long hours of instructions and endless days of meaningless information overload, euphemistically called induction training. Since no one department can handle fresh nincompoops for a very long time, hence they would shuttle you from one department to another in the name of rotational training, so that by the time the first year is complete everyone knows how utterly useless you and your education is for the real world and from your side you become completely disillusioned by the way the corporate world works.
For every query, a manual, a section, a sub section and a policy is thrown at you. There is a travel policy which tells you that the kind of hotel that you would want to live in is always beyond your band and that all local travels must have details of where you went and with whom, which often is something you are not willing to divulge. For example why would you tell them that you took the afternoon off and went to have beer with freshers like you and indulge in competitive bitching about whose job sucks the most. There is a leave policy that you need to memorize even though leaves don't apply to newbies like you. There is promotion policy that you are shown as a tantalizing carrot, but which is something you are not even allowed to imagine for the next three years.
First job is remembered for endless trips to the printer, photocopier, the printing press and any other clerk job that all seniors did when they were freshers, but now want you to do it, positioned to you as learning the basics, but in reality nothing less than revenge. You often stay till the last because everyone believes, because you are a fresher you do do not have a life, not at least a social one. They believe, like normal human beings, you do not feel hungry or feel the need to sleep every once in a while. They also believe that dumping more work just when you are about to leave for the day at 10 in the night is preparing you for larger things to come. First job teaches you the virtues of smiling at gross stupidity, tolerating lack of logic and finally warming up to the idea that the longer people have been here the more skeletons they have to hide. You learn more about the office politics. cliques, coteries, cabals and history from the guard, pantry boy the housekeeping staff and the lowly support staff, something the HR department inadvertently forgot to mention in their induction.
The good news is that everyone remembers his first job, at least the normal ones do. The bad news is only a few remember who they were and how they were then. Considering what they end up becoming, its a good thing to remember. Check it out!
Guru
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